Right first up, my worry is that the gearbox failed after about 40k miles and that's not supposed to happen so early, especially not with a Landie. It did seem quite an odd thing to happen and the dealer seemed shocked (well they would), but still I dunno it just put me off a bit. I really don't think this is a problem generally with them, but it dampened my enthusiasm.
Otherwise, well it's been just fantastic. It's all the power and fearlessness you'd expect from any Landie but with loads of smooth fittings and features like you'd expect in a fairly up market family saloon. The fuel consumption is just brilliant as well, pretty much the same as my wife's little Focus. So I can get all this power and without feeling like a git for spoiling the environment. Or if someone does bleat on about that I can quickly bat it aside.
Manoeuvring this beast is ok, if a bit tricky at times. Not being sexist or anything but my wife certainly likes it a lot less than I do. It's got parking beepers though, so that makes it a lot less hit and miss. Well hopefully all miss and no hit!
You can tell it's Landie all the time. Plenty of the genius developments of their range have made it into the Freelander. Like little things, such as the double sided boot surface which is waterproof on one side and normal on the other. Good for when I'm surfing. The boot is obviously huge too, and it just laughs at towing anything and everything. I towed a mate's car (quite a big Lexus) last year and it hardly even noticed.
But like I said it's got lots of luxuries as well. Bluetooth stereo control, woooo!! And all the normal stuff like aircon and cruise control and that sort of thing. Just feels like a Landie and a Lexus had a baby or something. I never bothered getting the electric seats but that sounds like it'd be really labour saving too. One thing is that although it's got a satnav display built in, which looks cool, the stereo display is a pretty old school green background LED panel, which looks a bit naff and can also be hard to see when the sun is on it from the back. Handy controls on the steering wheel mind, sort of fixes that problem cos you seldom need to look at that display anyway.
The kids like the space in the back. They keep ON AND ON asking me to get the TVs fitted in the back, but nooooo way am I doing this. They can sit and listen to me regail them with fascinating stories haha. It's good to be able to control all the windows from the front, and lock them too if need be. The double sun roof is really grand. Arm rests up front too, for both people, very nice.