1999 Land Rover Freelander XEi review from Australia and New Zealand

Front Right tyre worn badly.

ECM module faulty, soon to be replaced under warranty.

Clutch on the way out, after 50000km.

I've had the car for 18months and have had a couple of problems with it, but am reasonably happy with it. Would buy another, probably the V6, due to cheap petrol prices here in Australia.

I bought the 1.8 Petrol, which is a little underpowered, but acceptable. Using premium unleaded fuel helps considerably. The V6 is $10000 more!, and thirsty, and on a test drive around town didn't seem much quicker off the mark. I also prefer manuals, so that meant buying the 1.8P or the TD4.

I was using the car on a gravel in Tasmania, and the Traction control warning light came on, and the Down-Hill control warning light. This a known fault with the Engine management module (which I found out about on the net), and will be getting it replaced by the dealer.

The headroom is quite tight: I am 6'2", and have a 'long' torso. My first sit in a Freelander 5dr was at the Melbourne motorshow 2000, and the rep said, yes, everybody complained about that. I ended up buying a 3dr softop which actually has an extra 1inch of headroom due to the 'sunroof' panels. headroom is OK, but I have had the seat padding removed by 1inch to give me better visibility especially at the sides. You cannot lower the frame of the seat apparently because of the seatbelt pretensioners.

There are numerous postings on bulletin boards about tyre wear and road noise. It IS a noisy vehicle, I reckon mainly due to the softop (having ridden in MGs and MX5s). I have just replaced the 2 front tyres (the originals), which have done 52000kms, which is OK. I will be watching them closely for adverse wear though.

Clutch: the bite point seems to have gotten a lot higher recently, after a bit of off-roading on sand. There has been a lot of clutch reliability problems reported on the net. Apparently it is not adjustable even by a dealer! I was the 2nd owner, so it's hard to tell how the first owner treated it of course.

Good stuff: drives very well with little body roll for a 4WD. Excellent on gravel roads which is what I really bought it for. If you want to do real off-road stuff, buy a Disco! Good styling, good visibility and headroom/legroom in the back, even for me.

Bad stuff: cost of parts (imported from UK, and crappy $ conversion rate). Servicing is expensive, as the dealer is a 'prestige brand' dealer e.g. Audi/MG/BMW/Jag etc. Will be looking elsewhere when the warranty runs out.