LAND ROVER FREELANDER

It didn’t take long to break the new Freelander. After less than an hour of hard driving at the British Army’s off-road course near Driffield, Yorkshire, there was a popping sound. Land Rover’s newest baby — only a few days old and on its first proper outing — stopped in a dry stream bed in a puddle of power-steering fluid like a puppy that had soiled the floor. Worried Land Rover officials with clipboards formed a huddle and summoned a transporter to whisk the forlorn-looking vehicle away.

It’s no joke when a brand-new production model — £380m and four years in development by Ford, the world’s third-biggest car manufacturer — goes up the creek. Or, rather, refuses to. Particularly when it’s being driven by a journalist in front of a crowd of military top brass.

The men in uniform shook their heads. Had our chaps been going to war in the thing they would have been stranded. “Not ruggedised,” they muttered. “Soft-roader.” To be fair, the army was never going to like this neat little 4x4. The military doesn’t trust anything that comes with a heater or doesn’t need kick-starting. In any case, it prefers tracks to tyres and the Freelander wasn’t olive green, so it must be for wimps.

A smug-looking Andrew Frankel leant out of the cab of his BV206, the menacing-looking battlefield monster that I had been trying to overtake before it all became too much for the Freelander. “Problems?” he beamed. “Need a tow?”

Of course the newest addition to the Land Rover range had no chance against the BV — a machine they call Darth Vader because of its indestructibility — but we wanted to see how much punishment it could take. It was the culmination of three days of proving trials that included tarmac, mud and sand and, thus far, the Freelander hadn’t put a foot wrong.

For the final challenge the training wing of the Defence School of Transport kindly loaned us its off-road course, reckoned to be the toughest in Europe, then trooped out to watch the contest. The Freelander blew a hose after a gruelling 56 minutes. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t a competent off-road machine or an excellent all-round vehicle. It is.

The fact that Land Rover was willing to allow us to subject the vehicle to this kind of challenge showed the confidence it had in it. That’s something you couldn’t say about its predecessor — a wannabe off-roader adopted by school-run mums, which rarely left the suburban jungle. The first-generation Freelander may have been Europe’s bestselling 4x4 for three years after its launch in 1998, but for a while now it has been past its sell-by date. Judging from The Sunday Times’s mailbag it was also one of the most frustrating vehicles to own (thanks in part to a tendency for the K-series engine to blow its head gasket).

The Freelander 2 is a new design, and judging by its build quality, promises to be a lot more robust. The only bits it uses from the parts bin come from its successful bigger sister, the Discovery 3, including — on the slightly pricier models — the dashboard, “intelligent” steering wheel and the Terrain Response system. This allows you to adapt throttle response, and the electronic stability program (ESP) for driving on snow, ice, sand and mud (it has four settings, where the Disco has five). The Freelander’s ride and refinement are every bit as good as the Disco’s, which means it’s pretty exceptional for this class of car.

From an off-road point of view, it has a clean underside with no bits of suspension hanging down to get snagged on rocks, and all the important bolts face backwards and out of harm’s way. It may share certain underpinnings with a Ford Focus but it is engineered like a Land Rover should be.

It’s a mere 50mm longer than the previous version, but the Freelander 2’s cabin is roomier (by 15%) and the boot is much bigger (38%). Large glass areas give it a spacious feel and it has what Land Rover describes as a “command” driving position (that means you can see all four corners of the vehicle).

The car we tested was powered by Ford’s new 3.2 litre straight-six engine — the same as that installed under the bonnet of the recently launched Volvo S80. It is smooth and responsive, although Land Rover owners will probably be better off with the torque and fuel efficiency of the 2.2 litre four-cylinder turbocharged diesel.