Page created: 1-Nov-09

Freelander TD4 GS

Year of registration: '01/51

Owned: August '08 to date

After the trials and tribulations of my Land Rover ownership over the previous year or so, it was time for a big dose of pragmatism: I no longer needed a big vehicle for holidays and towing duties as my wifes' Discovery would serve for those purposes. I didn't have time for a 'project' vehicle and most of my driving is on relatively short local journeys. Added to all of this was fact that I've never owned one before and the Freelander became the obvious Land Rover choice for me.

I quickly decided that I wanted a model with the TD4 engine, which meant post 2001, but otherwise I was quite relaxed about the specification. After viewing a couple of particularly rough examples, I came across this late '01 TD4 GS in excellent condition complete with full Land Rover service history. It was even green - a proper Land Rover colour! The initial test drive didn't disappoint and once again the deal was done.

On the whole I've been very impressed with this vehicle. It's comfortable, economical and practical for everyday use whilst still maintaining that essential Land Roveryness that I was craving. Off-road, I've found that it does require a different driving style to my previous vehicles, which I would best describe as 'determined'. This is mainly to compensate for the lack of low range gears that would usually enable crawling over obstacles and to let the electronics know in a very definite way what's expected of them. It also tends to crash around a bit due to the relative lack of ground clearance, but fortunately this seems to sound a lot worse than it actually is.

As ever, I've already made some changes to suit my particular needs and/or whims, and I have a few other ideas in the pipeline for when time allows, more details of which can be found in the technical pages.