motor

A brand new limited edition of the Land Rover Freelander 2 was revealed at the Bologna Motor Show in Italy this past week. Scheduled to launch in early 2011, the Freelander 2 SD4 Sport SUV will be limited to the UK with 500 units being manufactured, and starting at £33,945.

The managing director, Colin Green at Land Rover UK said, “The Freelander 2 SD4 Sport Limited Edition offers customers the practicality, performance and efficiency of our best-selling compact SUV with more dramatic, sporty styling and the overall package represents good value for money.” Improving the exterior styling of the car is a discrete body kit and 19-inch alloy wheels, while the interior receives either Ebony Windsor or Ebony Napoli leather, along with a Piano Black finish on parts of the dashboard.

Similar to the Land Rover Discovery 4 Landmark Special Edition, the Freelander 2 received a new front grille in black, and the company offers these cars in either Fuji White, Santorini Black, and the all-new Firenze Red. Performance numbers are pretty standard, with a 2.2-liter four-pot diesel engine, hooked up to a six-speed automatic transmission to deliver 190 horsepower.

At the track it is able to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in 8.7 seconds, and the top speed was recorded at 118 mph. With the new Intelligent Power Management System (IPMS), the battery is charged while braking from the recovered kinetic energy. The Land Rover Freelander 2 SD4 Sport can also run on 10 percent biodiesel, and spits out CO2 emmisions of 185 g/km.

The Range Rover Evoque is a relatively compact luxury vehicle scheduled for production in 2011 from Land Rover. The production model was announced on July 1, 2010, and it is Land Rover’s first serious attempt at offering a vehicle designed to address the issue of climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. A near production concept of the crossover SUV was unveiled at the North American International Auto Show as the Land Rover LRX in January 2008, and production is scheduled to begin in 2011.

The Range Rover Evoque  LRX is the most compact Land Rover to date. Its size complements a wide array of efficiency improving technologies in the form of Land Rover’s e_Terrain technologies. These include biofuel compatibility, lightweight construction materials and technologies such as the removable carbon composite roof panels, regenerative brakes, a stop-start system, and the ERAD (electric rear axle drive) parallel hybrid powertrain system. ERAD encompasses the incorporation of an electric motor into the rear axle of the vehicle. It will propel the LRX to speeds of up to 20 mph (32 km/h) before the engine is ignited by and integrated starter generator as part of the stop-start system. ERAD is designed to reduce CO2 emissions by an average of 20 percent under the NEDC test cycle but is expected to offer another 10 percent reduction in extra-urban driving situations. The system has been designed to also optimise the off-road ability of the vehicle Land Rover aims to achieve 120 g/km CO2 emissions and fuel economy of 60 mpg-imp (4.7 L/100 km; 50 mpg-US) on the European combined cycle. Achieving this is an efficient 2.0 litre turbodiesel engine.