Off Road 4×4 Driving

Well, we’ve had a play in it, and it’s lovely.

On road the engine pulls effortlessly up through the gears and speeds, giving you confidence that now you could actually try to overtake that slow moving mobility scooter with ease. For those of us who thought the TD5 was good, this is another jump in quality again. Unfortunately, there is even less likelihood that you can look after the engine in this one yourself - you’ll have to go back to the 200/300tdi’s before you can muck around with them yourself (and even some of the 300’s came with an electronic brain - so beware).

The gearbox feels good, and the 6 gears do help on road, though it’s not hard to stall if you try to set off a bit sharp in second. Off road however you start to notice a real difference. The low first gear is even better than the low first in the Santana (Land Rover’s estranged Spanish cousin), with slow controlled descents, and so much pulling power that you have to literally stand on the brake pedal to stall it.

The transfer and diff lock lever has moved slightly, though after a minute you don’t notice this, and the action is still the same - intuitive and sensible.

The suspension and shocks have not changed much, and considering that the one we had a play in was brand new it felt very composed over some of the roughest terrain our course could throw at it. Hopefully the shocks and coils will wear well, and it’ll feel just as competant after 5 years of use.

So now for the niggles!

Why in heaven’s name didn’t they lengthen the seat rails for the driver? There’s a good amount of room in the back seats (this isn’t a luxury bus - it’s a Land Rover), so losing a little so that the operator can control the pedals more comfortably would surely help those of us over 6′ tall who have to do a Mr Bean in order to drive them.

They’ve also got rid of the Land Rover signature vents in the front - something which should help with the foggy morning problems, but realistically was part of the joy of a Land Rover - simple solutions to simple problems. Though the new dash looks nice enough (in a slightly flattened way), it feels like a complex solution to something that wasn’t really a problem. Now if your fan packs up you get no airflow, whereas before all you had to do was speed up a little!

Other than that - it’s pretty darn nice. I’m sure that someone could easily adapt the seat rails if needed, and I’m not going to worry too much that the water no longer sloshes through the vents on long deep wades. My only worry is what will happen next - we all know that this is a halfway redesign to comply with EU regs, so what will happen in 2010 - will we still have the simple workhorse the Land Rover was initially designed to be, or will we have a retro styled 4×4 people carrier/van that is the worst of all compromises?

So far the improvements have on balance improved it - we hope it stays like this.