Land Rover Freelander SE3

Land Rover Freelander SE3 Land Rover Freelander SE3
First Drive Review

The introduction of Land Rover's Freelander SE3 in this country coincided with the trials for the company's global G4 outdoor adventure competition—basically, a renaming of the grueling Camel Trophy off-road challenge, which has run in impossible places such as Borneo. Thus, we were able to try out some of the driving sections set up in Nevada to eliminate contenders seeking a place on the U.S. team.

One was a narrow autocross track with a few berms and hills on it, another was an off-road course with steep hills and rutted, tortuous sections. Apart from weeding out contestants, the two courses helped convince journalists that the Freelander SE3 does indeed have some of the famous off-road capabilities usually considered to be Land Rover's heritage. That's perhaps a surprise in light of the Freelander's monocoque body (albeit with various underfloor box-section structures), full-time four-wheel drive, and lack of hard-core off-road devices such as low-range gearing or locking differentials. Instead, the Freelander makes do with a center viscous coupling, a low first gear, and ABS-managed hill-descent control.

It may surprise you to learn that once you've abandoned the low-range, locked-up off-road driving style and adapted to the somewhat faster hill-approach technique required of the Freelander, the little Landie gets over some pretty tough terrain.

Not that most of the sport-utility market cares. Hence the metamorphosis of what we used to expect of a Land Rover—a mud slogger with solid axles and transfer-case, low-range four-wheel drive—into what we get with the Freelander; that is, the same basic mechanical equipment as in a thoroughly house-trained Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, or Ford Escape, all rolled into a similarly cute, compact SUV package.

And now, to further reduce the utility of an already pretty small vehicle, the SE3 is a two-door, despite sharing nearly the same dimensions as the original five-door Freelander. Let's see, where else has this formula worked? But listen, the SE3 offers something status-conscious suburbanites will buy into, particularly if they live in a sunny, preferably coastal environment: detachable sunroof panels and rear roof section for open-top operation while surfing, boating, or just plain posing.