Land Rover’s Freelander is a forgotten modern classic in waiting

Think of the green oval logo and images come thick and fast; wax jackets and mud-covered Land Rovers remain entrenched in the hearts and minds of enthusiasts. When Land Rover appealed to urban families with the Freelander 1 however, it struck gold.

In a recent corporate rebranding, the Land Rover name is being dropped from the company’s title: ‘Jaguar Land Rover’, established in 2013, will become simply ‘JLR’. The Land Rover badge will remain on future models as what it calls a ‘trust mark’; instead, Land Rover’s models will be pushed as effectively, marques in their own right.

Range Rover, Defender, Discovery. There’s a fourth nameplate missing from that prestigious line up: Freelander. JLR regard it as its eighth heritage model, a best-seller in its time. Between 1997 and 2006, Freelander 1 or L314, as it was known within Land Rover, shifted 540,000 units to a market in flux.

Historians consider Freelander 1 a pivotal model in Land Rover’s history, one that paved the way for the Discovery Sport, a ‘Freelander 3’ in all but name. Some fans of the marque, however, think of the Evoque as the Freelander’s true successor.

Family car buyers were spoiled for choice in the mid-to-late 90s: while people-carriers and four-by-fours battled it out in the medium and large car market segments, slowly squeezing out the traditional estate, the first ‘crossover’ models appeared, those which combined elements of both configurations to the most marketable ends.

Back then, the people-carrier (or multi-purpose vehicle) downsized to stay relevant; utilitarian off-roaders morphed into the Sport-Utility Vehicle (SUV) - high-seated, large-bodied hatchbacks with some off-road ability if needed, but confined mostly to highways and byways.

Crash test regulations saw off the MPV, and the crossover class prevailed. In 2023, British buyers can’t get enough of crossovers. The likes of the Nissan Qashqai, Nissan Juke, Tesla Model Y, Kia Sportage, Hyundai Tucson and Volkswagen T-Roc feature prominently in the top ten sales charts.

Were Freelander 1 current, it would be considered a crossover; certainly, had the road-biased Rover proposal won out during its development, we’d have got such a car, albeit with MPV levels of versatility. In its own words, however, Land Rover regards Freelander 1 as an SUV.

Freelander may not have completely redefined the segment like the seminal Range Rover of 1971, but, like Spen King’s masterpiece, it appealed strongly to buyers who never would have considered a Land Rover in the past.

Key to its success was its on-road refinement; the likes of a contemporary Discovery would have driven further into the forest, but would have put a casual buyer off with its ponderous on-road dynamics, compromised cabin (a hangover from a body designed to sit atop the Range Rover’s separate chassis) and dedicated off-road controls.

Crucially, Freelander drove enough like a car to compete with the likes of the mini-MPVs vying for an increasingly splintered market segment. Granted, you could carry more in the likes of the Renault Mégane Scenic or Citroën Xsara Picasso, but they would bottom out in a muddy garden centre car park or get stuck when the weather turned at the end of a bracing family walk in the countryside.

Compared to a similarly sized (and priced) four-cylinder Jeep Cherokee, however, the Freelander’s on-road manners were sublime; if you did need to divert on to unsurfaced roads, the hardware sorted it out automatically.

‘Lifestyle’ was the keyword during the Freelander’s development. Work began on what became L314 in 1989, when engineers from Land Rover and Rover, newly reunited under British Aerospace ownership, collaborated on a new, smaller model, an entry level car below the Discovery, aimed at a less hardcore customer base; these new owners, if introduced correctly, could work their way up to a Range Rover.

As AROnline’s Keith Adams wrote: “The idea was a simple one: according to ‘Meet The Ancestors’, by James Taylor, Land Rover executives liked BMW’s way of doing things: the 3 Series to entice younger people to the brand, the 5 Series for [when] they get more affluent and perhaps gain a family, and the 7 Series for when they finally make it to the top of the tree.

“All the way through the customer’s career (and life), there would be a BMW to match their needs and desires. Not only that but, with such a strong family identity through the range, there was upward aspiration without the pain of feeling second-best for owning a lower model in the range.

“With the soon-to-be released Discovery and the eternally desirable Range Rover already in the fleet, Land Rover would have its 5 and 7 Series cars; what they needed if they were to adopt the BMW plan was a ‘3 Series’.”

It was a clever move – the project, which began as ‘Lifestyle’, and was given other titles as time progressed, including ‘Pathfinder,’ ‘Oden’, ‘Cyclone’ and latterly ‘CB40’ (its official title named in 1994 after its birthplace, Canley Building 40).

Moreover, it gave Land Rover a smaller vehicle to sell in the United States, raising its Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) index rating, something which, at the time, was also rumoured to be coming to Europe (emissions ratings would eventually determine road fund licence and clean air zone boundaries).

Refinement and ease of use were priorities – remember, Land Rover was pitching at owners who might enjoy the occasional excursion off road, but didn’t want to be encumbered with the hardware needed to cross mountains and ford streams on a daily basis.

To that end, the mixed teams – those that had previously fought on a political level as whether or not to make ‘Pathfinder’ a Land Rover or Rover – got radical.

While the new car would use Rover engines (primarily the 1.8-litre K-Series petrol and the 2.0-litre L-Series diesel) it would not use a separate chassis; much like American Motors Corporation’s (AMC’s) 1984 Jeep Cherokee ‘XJ’, CB40 employed a reinforced monocoque body shell. For the first time, Land Rover was to ditch a separate chassis.

Further weight and complexity were reduced by doing away with a low-range gearbox, forced on the team to an extent by the decision to use Rover’s PG1 gearbox, a light-duty car unit that couldn’t multiply the torque needed at crawling speeds.

Instead, a new development in anti-lock braking gave us the first instance of Land Rover’s Hill Descent Control (HDC); this feature premiered in the Freelander and was later adapted for use in future parent BMW’s X5 (though the efficacy of that particular system was rumoured to be less than stellar).

CB40/Freelander eschewed levers and locking hubs for a viscous coupling (VC), whose fluid reacted to heat. Bolted to the final drive of the PG1 was an Intermediate Reduction Drive (IRD) built by Steyr-Puch; this acted, in effect, like an automatic transfer case, sending drive to the rear wheels when traction was lost up front and the temperature rose in the VC, known in Freelander terms as the Viscous Couping Unit (VCU).

The new four-wheel-drive system was tested to destruction under the bodywork of 22 Austin Maestro van ‘mule’ prototypes, known internally as ‘Mad Max’. Dedicated off-roaders came to hate the system, but the casual lifestyle buyer had little to worry about.

It convinced many within Land Rover, however; programme leader, Dick Elsy, told Autocar that: “I remember Roger Crathorne [Land Rover’s off-road guru] driving a Maestro prototype at Eastnor [Land Rover’s proving ground] and saying: ‘Bloody hell, that works really well.’”

Stress-free off-roading was a key piece of the Freelander’s appeal. Earlier quasi-crossovers had tried similar feats, like the two-wheel-drive Matra Rancho Grand Raid, with its limited-slip ‘Antibog’ differential.

Others, like the AMC Eagle, spent the first year as a permanent all-wheel drive vehicle – in effect, a Subaru Forester (another car launched contemporaneously to the Freelander) 17 years before the fact.

By 1981, the cabin flick-switch operated, VC assisted Select Drive system became standard on the AMC Eagle range, allowing the driver to switch between two-and four-wheel-drive on the fly.

The American car, with its wheel arch extensions, raised ride height and accessible hardware, developed by British engineer (and Ford GT40 co-creator) Roy Lunn, was too far ahead of its time to see commercial success.

Upon the release of the Eagle, Lunn accurately predicted the crossover segment in a paper submitted to the Society of Automotive Engineers decades before such cars became popular.

Furthermore, VC-controlled four-wheel-drive became a common system in modern crossovers – but it was a huge departure for Land Rover, whose reputation was in part founded on the capabilities of its sturdy, mechanical off-road hardware.

The press and public needed little convincing of the Freelander’s merits; launched in 1997 with evocative Gerry McGovern styling, and 1.8-litre K-Series petrol (and 2.0-litre L-Series diesel options), Autocar rated it above Honda’s similar-in-appearance CR-V and Toyota’s RAV4.

It’s worth noting that Honda, though still in partnership with Rover Group, was aware of CB40/Freelander during its development, but did not collaborate on the car, nor did it receive key technical information regarding its layout and performance.

Three-and five-door Freelanders were available from the start, with the former offering soft and hard top options; Softback or Hardback, in Land Rover’s terms. Competitive pricing, and the prestige conferred by the Land Rover badge, meant sales were brisk, though the earliest cars were dogged by electrical failures, and build quality issues, which were steadily addressed, and improved upon.

It was frustrating given the Freelander’s potential that the brand-new factory to produce it in (the old SD1 body plant at Lode Lane, completely refitted) hadn’t fully exorcised the build quality issues that plagued cars during British Leyland’s tenure of the premises.

Nevertheless, buzz around the Freelander remained strong. BMW, which bought Rover in 1994, was delighted with the car as it went into production; it had long regarded Land Rover as a feather in its cap of intellectual properties and eagerly supported the project into production, developed as it was under a £450 million British Aerospace

A year after launch, 27 Freelanders took part in the last-ever Camel Trophy set in Tierra del Fuego, alongside Defenders, Discoverys, and Range Rovers. Land Rover was keen to prove the Freelander’s mettle; despite the misgivings of seasoned staff and competitors, recollections on the Camel Trophy Club website revealed that the Defender 110s needed more help than the Freelanders did.

By 1999, a Commercial van variant with a cabin partition, no rear seats and solid plastic window panelling had joined the catalogue, with three trim levels – base, Xi, and Xe.

With sales in the United States planned, the 2.5-litre KV6 engine was fitted to the model from 2000, with cars shipped across the pond the following year, available only with the larger petrol engine and automatic transmission.

2000 also saw the Rover Group broken up by BMW, which quickly saw Ford add Land Rover to its portfolio, bolstering the back catalogue of its Premier Automotive Group (PAG), created a year earlier. A collection of luxury marques that already had Aston Martin and Jaguar within its walls, PAG also brought Lincoln, Mercury and Volvo into its direct control.

As a sophisticated European upstart to the likes of the Honda CR-V and Toyota RAV4, the Freelander’s US career began promisingly; alas, reliability woes dragged its standing down as its Japanese rivals rode higher and higher up the reliability charts.

At home, tweaks continued inside and out; joining the KV6 was a minor facelift as well as a new oil burner: BMW’s N47 2.0-litre diesel, known as the Td4, ousted the tough, but agricultural L-Series. Trim levels were also renamed: S, GS, and ES supplanted base, Xi, and Xe.

There was even a failed bid to include the Freelander the Tomb Raider film franchise. While Lara Croft drove a 88-inch wheelbase Series II in-game, her screen counterpart ended up with a Defender 110 built by Land Rover Special Vehicles. Former creative design manager, Tony Hunter, had designs for a similarly decked out Freelander to appear in Lara Croft’s garage, but her film makers disagreed.

Significant long-term changes for the Freelander arrived in 2003, revamping the by-then-dated interior, as well as updating the nose and tail to more closely resemble that of the Range Rover (L322) and Discovery 3.

At the same time, the stiffer, larger wheeled and sharper handling Sport model was also added to the family to snare buyers who wanted more on-road performance. Elsewhere, Ford had been desperately improving the K Series since it took control of Land Rover, the engine’s oft-reported inlet manifold and head gasket woes a major public relations sticking point.

Out in the wild, the death of the Camel Trophy saw a new event rise from the ashes – the worldwide G4 Challenge. Of the Freelanders tackled New York in 2003, 14 cars – all of which were V6s – went on 2006’s Brazilian leg.

As the Noughties progressed, however, Ford knew that the reign of L314 was coming to an end. The model had reconciled Land Rover with its parent, proved itself beyond argument in the toughest terrains and brought customers to the green oval in numbers it had never seen before.
A shortage of engines – and MG Rover’s imminent demise – saw L314 leave the US in 2005.

Slowly but surely, the range was reduced in anticipation of Freelander 2 (L359), its replacement. By 2006, all that remained was the Td4 turbodiesels, with four trim levels - Adventurer, Freestyle, Sport and HSE – packing in the kit to unprecedented levels. Freelander II lasted from 2006 to 2014.

Based on the Volvo P3/Ford EUCD platform, that model was never directly replaced; nowadays, the Discovery Sport and Evoque share the Freelander’s legacy.

Buying a Freelander 1 (L314)

With the Freelander on the cusp of modern classic status, historic vehicle auctions have only just begun to take them on.

For the time being, they’re the most affordable Land Rover on the market. Well-used but serviceable petrol and diesel examples start from £800; ex-Camel Trophy and G4-Challenge cars, when they appear, command a premium. Otherwise, decent pre-and post-facelift cars can be had for well within a £2500-£3000 budget.

Many higher mileage cars were rallied in events like the Britpart British Cross Country Championships and Freelander Challenge, which combined off-roading with faster mixed surface runs.

Lancaster Insurance Services spoke to Land Rover specialist, Avenger 4x4, about what to look for when sizing up a Freelander 1, and its director, Allen Walker, took us through the pitfalls. “I don’t think they’re as bad as people make out,” he said. “They’re a good little car. Service history is important on a Freelander, and they’ll all have had a few window switches, motors and regulators, though that’s minor.”

Throughout the life of the Freelander 1, four engines were offered, two petrol, two diesel. Petrols comprised a four-cylinder K-Series (118bhp) and a later, post-2000 2.5-litre V6 (KV6) producing 173bhp. Oil burners ran to a 90bhp 2.0-litre L-Series until 1999, which was replaced by a 2.0-litre BMW unit with 110bhp.

The petrols are revvier and smoother on the road, but their peakiness can sometimes cause problems off road when low-down grunt is needed.

Noisier and heavier though the diesels might be, the payback is in their thriftier fuel consumption and greater low end torque. Derv-powered Freelanders also suffer from fewer oil leaks – particularly when compared to the petrol KV6 engines, and are far less likely to run into problems with their cooling systems.

“On engines, it’s a matter of opinion”, Allen said. “[If] well-looked after, the 1.8 K-Series is good, but, once the head gasket’s gone, the engine’s toast, [and] not many people look after them properly that is the biggest thing, they skimp on parts and oil.

“[The KV6 is] a bit like the K Series if you get a good one that’s been very well looked and regularly serviced it won’t give you any grief at all. If it’s had any signs of coolant or head issues, or thermostat issues, walk away. On the petrols, once the cooling system’s played up, it’s downhill from there.

“The 2.0-litre Td4 is a BMW engine and if it’s well looked after it’s pretty bomb-proof. The pre-99 [cars] where they put the 2.0-litre L-Series in it out of the Rover, you’d have to go some to kill one of those. They’re a little bit painful [unrefined], they’re not as quick as a Td4 but they are a mega-solid engine.

“If the clutch is going [on the Td4], that can get expensive, the parts are just as expensive as the labour, especially the Td4, it runs a dual-mass flywheel, and I know a lot of garages don’t, but you should really replace all the hydraulics when you replace the clutch.”

Allen isn’t a fan of solid flywheel Freelander conversions, even though the jury online is out; similar swaps take place on Td5-engined Discovery 2s and the clutch effort, in Allen’s opinion, increases considerably.

Another Td4 issue to be aware of is the crankshaft pulley. Allen confirmed: “The crankshaft pulley has a damper built into it; they can separate and when they do, the engine clanks and people think the pistons have gone, normally it’s not, it’s just the pulley.”

A problem like this isn’t necessarily terminal, but haggle the price downwards if you encounter it. There are a couple of other diesel-specific problems to look out for, too – but again, there’s not too much to worry about. “They suffer from injection pump leaks but it’s normally an O-ring on the back, the odd injector here and there,” Allen said. Watch for high pressure fuel pump failures on Td4s, too.

OK – so what about the prospects of that much-vaunted, 16-patent drivetrain? The solutions Land Rover devised wrung the maximum from Rover’s parts bin – but in 2023, owing to breakages, many Freelander 1s remain stuck in front-wheel drive.

Allen continued: “[The viscous coupling unit is] a rubbish design [although saying that is] a bit harsh. I’ve never understood why Land Rover went from a perfectly good working transfer box on the back of a gearbox in the middle of a car to some kind of bearing viscous thing.”

“The biggest expenses on them, […] it’s not that dear if it’s there [non-functional], the viscous coupling seizes, and this is what people don’t understand, they don’t even notice it, which then does [in] either the intermediate reduction drive [IRD] or rear diff.” Worn bearings in the viscous coupling unit will, in turn, wear the longshaft (propshaft) out.

“What people [then] do is take the propshaft kit off completely with the viscous coupling, and then it’s front-wheel drive. [Once the prop’s gone] that’s it, it can’t fail, that’s normally the reason they’re taken off, for fuel economy, I’ve run them in two-wheel-drive, they are better on fuel; most people don’t use them off road.

“Bell Engineering [does] a very good refurbished unit […] a replacement viscous kit from them is about £300 and as long as your propshaft’s fine, they’ll go straight back on.”

It goes without saying that a Freelander 1 with working four-wheel-drive is worth a premium over an example running in front-wheel-drive alone; ask the vendor to demonstrate that it works.

If there’s a clunking coming on and off power or it feels like the brakes are binding, either the IRD, VCU, or both, could be at fault. Check also what tyres a car for sale has, what size they are, and their age.

Allen warned: “Matching tyres is another thing with them, the rolling radius [is crucial]; if you’ve got four different tyres on four different corners, that can knock the viscous coupling [unit] out quite quickly as well.”

Two-wheel-drive Freelander 1s are perfectly serviceable vehicles, but you shouldn’t be paying a premium for one. Manuals fare better than automatics, but neither gearbox is bullet proof, as Allen related. “My wife’s had three Autos over a period of six years, they’re just good cars. We had no problems but they can be problematic: [the autos] can go wrong and when they do, they’re expensive.”

There’s less rust to worry about with Freelanders compared to other separate chassied Land Rovers, but it’s not all plain sailing, as Allen explained:

“They’re not that prone for rotting if I was looking anywhere the fuel tank cradles rot out, they’re a stupid design, they’re available new, and they’re not that dear. We have seen one or two where they’ve gone on the inner wings, but not many.

“Second hand parts are readily available…the door seals are expensive, from memory the last time we got them in it was £125 [per door, from Land Rover]; the plastic seals that go around the door, they bubble up and can be harder to get hold of second hand ones have done the same [but] there’s an abundance of second hand and aftermarket spares for them; it’s as with everything else, you pay for what you get.”

Easy to drive, cheap to fix and eminently affordable – while Land Rover ownership is a broad church, the Freelander 1 threw the doors open to more people than ever before. Prices won’t stay the same forever; as entry-level models go, it’s a great place in which to begin your green oval career.

Overlooked, underrated and unfairly looked down upon, he Freelander 1 deserves more recognition. It remains the most affordable modern classic Land Rover on the market, bolstered by a vast support network, with spares available in abundance second-hand and from Land Rover Heritage.