Driven #42:- Land Rover Freelander V6 ('05)

At a funeral, the grieving assembled tend to speak fondly of their dearly departed. Chances are, Great Uncle Derek had a few skeletons in his closet, but it really wouldn't be the right time to let them out. When somebody, or something has passed on, it's churlish to be too analytical, to get too hung up on the things they “could have done better,”

I appeal to you, then, to read the following as a description not a review. I mean, let's get this clear, we all know that the first Land Rover Freelander which admittedly died years ago, was never a particularly good car, just as Great Uncle Derek was probably not that great an Uncle. But we all have to start somewhere.

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Roadwork Summer Holiday 2011:- Part Three

Every holiday has to have a few objectives to make it truly worthwhile; a few events that mark the occasion and cause it to stick in the memory. When I came here a few years previously I visited Geevor Tin mine, and it lodged in my mind as being my single favourite UK tourist attraction. I had long threatened Nicola that I’d be taking her there one day, and that day arrived today.

And we were going there by car! The Rover, after slumbering in the sunshine, was back in use today. I was looking forward to driving new, challenging, unfamiliar roads. But first, a trip to the petrol station was required.

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Roadwork Summer Holiday 2011:- Part One

 

It took quite a leap of faith to trust the 825 with our holiday transportation needs. There was myself and my girlfriend, a substantial tent, a weeks worth of clothing, cooking apparatus and all the other tat that a week of camping usually entails. The boot swallowed most of it, the remainder spilling out onto the rear bench seat, and when loaded the rear end squatted down sending the headlamps beaming into the sky, illuminating satellites and space debris.

We had a choice of two other cars to take, both proven to be reliable, economical and practical. Either the Peugeot or the Audi would have been a sensible choice. But, then, that wouldn’t have been a challenge, would it? Here was a chance for the Rover to prove that it could still cut it where it counts:-

I sought to prove that a 1997 Rover 825 Si is good at being a car.

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Fleet Review;- The Grand Unveiling of the Official Car of RoadworkUK

Were this a proper website, surely every car manufacturer represented in the land would be tripping over themselves to furnish me with a long-term demonstrator, in the hope of this leading to praise gushing from these pages. As this is instead an amateur, update-when-it-suits-me type of operation, and is of course fiercely independent and won’t be lead by the corporate might of any organisation, I have to go it alone.

So, with no delivery-mileage Maserati glinting at me from the driveway, here, with great ceremony, is the newly adopted official car of RoadworkUK.

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Rover 75 Retrospective;- Requiem for an Industry

 

 

Anybody with an iota of integrity will admit that the Rover group put out more than its fair share of absolute dross over the years. But it also produced some extremely underrated machinery. 

One car that never really got the recognition it deserved is the Rover 75. OK, it wasn't everybody's cup of tea, but in hindsight the last totally new platform that Rover would ever deliver genuinely was good enough to make you wonder:

What if things had turned out differently?

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Driven #12:- Land Rover Freelander TD4 S

A recent trip around an all-terrain track in an open-top Defender reminded me just what Land Rover was all about. These were cars which could take on anything the world could throw at them, that would still be serviceable long after the cockroaches surrendered and even the Peugeot 504s had bitten the dust. 

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Fleet Review;- Remembering a Rover 820e

My grandfather is a veteran of world war two; with the RCAF he flew Lancasters and Halifaxes from Eastmoor in Yorkshire. After spending the war flying “twenty thousand rivets flying in close formation” over the ack-ack heavy skies of a burning Germany, it was clear that any car he would own would have to be imbued with some kind of mechanical allure. In fact, things started well with a pre-war Jaguar SS, albeit a heavily decomposed one with mushrooms sprouting from the wooden floorboards. He would later work through various big Humbers and Vauxhalls and company Fords right up to 1990, when be bought his first Rover. The one car I have loved most in my life.

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Mud, Leather, Harmon Kardon and Dung

In the (not especially good) 1995 flick Judge Dredd, it was mooted that the only surviving car brand in the year 20XX would be Land Rover. This was based on the reputation the cars had for robustness and longevity. No-nonsense engineering. Today, look at any of the range, apart from the specialist and due to be replaced worryingly soon Defender, and it has become hard to remember how they used to be before the SUV phenomenon took hold.

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