Land Rover Freelander Station Wagon (2003 - 2006) 1.8 SE 5d Owner Review

it's our 2nd Freelander but we wanted to try one with LPG. It was very cheap at £1,600 and had a lot of evidence of off-road use but a little clean-up and it stills looks very fresh for an 11 yr old car. The 'suedette' seats wear well although we had a little bolster repair on the drivers side, they were very comfortable even on longer trips. It's no speed merchant and the petrol does not seem to have the pull in top gear (this may be down to LPG reduced energy). It's road handling is a little iffy which is not surprising given it's off-road ability, as a soft-roader it certainly isn't as good as the RAV4 which we had before but in the snow it just pushes on through. The surprising bit is that with the LPG it delivers around 220 miles on £20 of fuel and hardly touches the petrol as the engine warms up and switches over to gas very quickly in comparison to other larger-engined LPG cars we've had. I monitor the coolant and oil levels a little more than I would a car with a better reliability record but not had a hint of a head gasket problem. The facelift model has the multi-layer head gasket and seems to be be OK. It's had a new rocker gasket, coil packs and plug which seemed to sort a misfire issue as well as new pads but that's not seemed too costly and done a couple of longer trips without problems although a little noisy. The clutch is a little clunky which is something our previous Freelander suffered from, this makes stop-start traffic a little tiresome. The passenger space is good in the back but the boot is a little compromised whilst the seats are in place. The rear seats fold far better than our other 4x4 and makes it a useful load carrier. We've not pulled anything heavy but seems to cope well with a trailer. Overall, as a 2nd hand buy with a lifetime of miles on the clock it seems to hold up very well. It feels that if the engine has survived 10 years and 90,000 miles, it's a keeper.