The Land Rover Freelander was the company’s first real crack at a compact 4×4, capitalising on the growing ‘soft-roader’ trend of the late ’90s that would originally morph into the amorphous crossover class that dominates today’s car market. Launched in 1997, it was shuffled off after two generations in 2015 to make way for the Discovery Sport. Now, though, JLR has announced the name is coming back, although it’ll be in a very different form.
For a start, it’s going to be a standalone brand rather than a specific model, although Freelander also won’t be part of JLR’s ‘House of Brands’ project that’s seen it split Range Rover, Defender and Discovery into separate sub-brands and subtly drop Land Rover branding from any of them.
Land Rover Freelander 2
Rather, it’s a separate, EV-only concern that’s being launched in partnership with Chinese carmaker Chery. The brand will spawn a range of electric cars based on Chery’s existing EV architecture, and while they’ll initially be manufactured and sold exclusively in China, there are plans to export them globally.
Chery and JLR have been involved in a joint venture named CJLR since 2012. It’s so far seen the establishment of a factory in the city of Changshu, which has produced a number of JLR vehicles for the Chinese market. These have included the Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport, as well as China-specific long-wheelbase versions of the Jaguar XE and XF saloons.
Land Rover Freelander 1
It’s not yet known when the first Freelander-branded cars will arrive, nor which non-China markets they’ll eventually be sold in. It’s nevertheless a somewhat surprising revival of a badge that looked to be dead and buried, although the extra brand recognition could well help establish it in global markets, much as the revived MG name has helped the brand become a volume seller in Europe in its current Chinese-owned form.
