|
The Land Rover Freelander 2 is the kind of car we at BSM love. It isn’t too large, is comfortable, it can handle an off-road course pretty well and it has character. It’s the latter that we look for in a car and the Freelander 2 has it in spades. But there were a couple of things we didn’t like; take the handling or the rather bland looks or the price tag, for instance. We also felt it could do with a few more ponies under the hood.
It seems Land Rover was waiting for the right moment and it all came together in May this year, when the first of the India-assembled Freelander 2s started rolling out. The changes were there to see – the front end has been tweaked and you now get a fully body-coloured license plate holder, new headlamps and marginally tweaked tail-lamps. There’s also more power on offer now and two power options instead of one. You get a 2.2-litre 150 bhp version for the SE and 190 bhp for the HSE, in the process reducing the number of trim levels from three to two. Importantly, there’s a change in the price tag too – the SE is now priced some Rs 4 lakh less than the previous iteration, while the HSE is nearly Rs 6 lakh cheaper.
The new pricing, coupled with the addition of GPS, a new touchscreen and USB playback capability meant we had to put the new car through its paces and after going back and forth with the folk at the Land Rover press office for what seemed like ages, the vehicle finally did arrive.
MORE ON PAGE 2>>
|
