Other features and options include keyless starting, adaptive front lights, rain-sensing wipers, park-distance control (front and rear) and — a nice touch — door mirrors that tilt inwards and down when you are reverse parking, so that you can see how you are aligned with the kerb. And, true to its off-road heritage, it doesn’t bleep infuriatingly at you because you’ve left your seatbelt unfastened.

There are a couple of negatives: off-road performance (as with its rivals) is limited by the absence of a low-ratio gearbox and height-adjustable air springs. It’s also pricier than the old Freelander (the cheapest costs £20,935 compared with £18,800, and Land Rover dealers are offering big discounts on the last of the current range) and it is available only as a five-door. The most expensive is an eye-watering £33,990, which is only £3,050 less than the Land Rover Discovery TDV6 SE, the best-value Disco available.

Good though the Freelander 2 is, it’s still not as good as its seven-seater sister. Its only serious rival in the class is likely to be BMW’s X3, a fairly grim car but one that has just enjoyed a comprehensive update. Even compared with the Freelander the X3 is expensive, so if BMW wants to compete it will have to drop its prices.

Since the test in Yorkshire a couple of weeks ago when we overcooked the demonstrator, there has been a flurry of activity behind the scenes at Land Rover to fix the problem. Blame is being laid on glitches in manufacturing after the transfer of Freelander production from Solihull in the West Midlands to Halewood, Merseyside, a plant once beset by industrial relations problems and renowned for “Friday afternoon” cars. That was 30 years ago, though, and last year Halewood won a JD Power Gold Plant Quality Award for Europe. This means the power steering should quickly be sorted out, doesn’t it?

Assuming it is, Land Rover has produced a clever, adaptable, potentially five-star, feelgood vehicle that should send rivals scurrying to their drawing boards.

Nicholas Rufford

Page two: Andrew Frankel drives the Alvis Haggluinds BV206()Continued from page one

ALVIS HAGGLUINDS BV206

As I looked at the Freelander, stranded and leaking fluid, it was only the risk of sounding like Crocodile Dundee that stopped me walking over to Nick Rufford and declaring: “That’s not an off-roader,” before pointing at my Alvis Hagglunds BV206 and adding, “that is an off-roader.”

In my limited experience of extreme off-roading there are only two marques — Jeep and Land Rover — that perform consistently well, and unsurprisingly, they are the only two big brands that build nothing other than off-roaders. But while I have been axle-deep in Saharan sand in a Land Rover and have driven a Jeep up a fast-flowing river, compared with the BV, they have the off-road ability of an airport trolley. You can’t climb a 60-degree slope or go swimming in a new Freelander 2.

The BV will take you to the most inaccessible places; not only will its caterpillar tracks, gutsy Mercedes diesel and ultra-low centre of gravity ensure it climbs almost anything, but the fact that it bends so much in the middle that it looks like it’s broken in half means it can climb over almost anything. And those chunky tracks don’t only give big grip, they also spread the weight so the BV won’t sink into snow or sand. Should you decide to drive it across a frozen lake, the tracks make it much less likely you’ll fall through the ice, but if you do, it will just float out again.

I knew none of this when I turned up at the Defence School of Transport. My first thought when I saw the BV was that it rivalled the Ssangyong Rodius as the ugliest vehicle I’d never driven. But as far as the BV was concerned, that was about to change. Usually when I leap into a new vehicle I wave aside offers of help, but in this case I let Sergeant Gary Hall take me for a quick spin around the test track to show me exactly what it can do.