It’s not often a gearbox makes a big impression but the BusinessCar office was unanimously lauding Land Rover’s new automatic shifter for the new Freelander, or Freelander 2 as the company insists on calling it.
It’s without doubt one of the finest auto ‘boxes on sale when mated to the decent 160PS 2.2-litre diesel engine. It’s smooth-changing, doesn’t seem to suffer from the flustered ‘not sure what gear I should be in’ nature of many automatics when you ask it to change down, and avoids the nasty ‘step-off’ problem symptomatic with autos where there’s a delay between a prod of the accelerator and any kind of forward motion. All of which is high praise indeed, and would have potentially seen it heading for a five-star performance if it weren’t for the tiny matter of the financials.
In the admittedly range-topping HSE spec of our test car, the Freelander weighs in at an eye-watering £32,075 in auto form, with that gearbox adding another £1370 to the price. It’ll also add a hefty chunk to your tax bill because the auto adds 30g/km to the CO2 emissions, bumping the figure up to 224. That means a 40% tax payer would have to cough up an extra £70 every month in benefit-in-kind tax, and that’s before you account for the extra fuel used as the auto’s 4.5mpg worse than its manual sibling. The cost per mile difference is only 1.5 pence though, thanks to the auto’s slightly better RVs.
The figures do get a little better if you want a Freelander but can do without much of the standard equipment. Entry-level S trim in auto form is more than 10 pence per mile cheaper and there are five spec levels to suit different budgets.
The cost per mile figures do give the automatic Freelander parity with its main rival, BMW‘s X3 2.0d, although the manual-only Honda CR-V and Toyota Rav4 make up for any lack of prestige capability with massive cost per mile advantages.
The Freelander TD4 auto is a very impressive piece of kit let down by P11D and CO2 figures.
