That stalwart icon of Land Rover all-terrain capability, the Defender, will be with us at least until 2010. What Car? reports that the legendary 4×4 is slated to receive major updates starting next spring that could carry the boxy off-roader well into the next decade.
Land Rover has announced that the 2007 edition of the Range Rover will replace last year’s 3-liter BMW-sourced diesel with a new V8 turbodiesel.
The debut of Land Rover’s replacement for the aging Freelander to be dubbed the LR2 appeared in Detroit. We figured it would pop up eventually at the British Motor Show in July, Paris Motor Show at the end of September or the newly rescheduled L.A. even later. But it seems the upscale mini-ute is ready for its close up as these leaked brochure pages suggest. We can’t glean any details from the images as the resolution is a bit too low for the text to be read. LR3-inspired styling, a more upmarket interior and a pair of moonroofs looks like a good place for the new LR2 to pick up where its underachieving predecessor left off.
Last weekend during a practice lap at Mid-Ohio Raceway the 009 Aston Martin ALMS went airborne off the track and ‘flew’ 142 feet before landing off the track in the dirt. The track was reportedly wet and the unidentified driver lost control under braking. Fortunately his car was the only one on that part of the track at the time and it amazingly remained level during its separation with terra firma.
South African superstar adventure athlete, Martin Dreyer, today won the 2006 Land Rover G4 Challenge. Beating off 17 of the world’s toughest adventure racers in the 4×4-based global Challenge, Dreyer took home a brand new Range Rover after a nail-biting climax to the 28 day marathon that spanned across four countries on two continents.
It was a dream start to Stage 3 of the Land Rover G4 Challenge for the home team. Even though Brazil’s Eleonora Audra hails from Sao Paulo rather than Rio de Janeiro, her victory in the Stage Start together with Martin Dreyer from South Africa, had the local crowd on Copacabana Beach on their feet.
Featuring a wide range of adventure- and lifestyle-themed broadcast video content, Land Rover’s new ‘Go Beyond’ microsite centers around what the company claims is the world’s first broadband TV channel launched by a car company.
Product placement is a time-honored trend. We’re quite sure that Ford is pining for a Bullitt remake, for example, but the war seems to be heating up.
As part of its ‘Designed for the Extraordinary’ marketing campaign, the adventurous folks at Land Rover rolled a 2006 LR3 onboard a C-130 ‘Hercules’ cargo plane, and then the flight crew used the car’s nav system to navigate the plane from Nice, France to the island of Corsica.
Land Rover’s e-Terrain vehicle isn’t meant to be taken literally. It’s a showcase for the company’s upcoming technology, particularly fuel efficiency a welcome sign, considering a supercharged Range Rover gets 13 mpg in city driving. Land Rover says that in combined use the e-Terrain’s technology can increase gas mileage by 33 percent while reducing tailpipe emissions and maintaining offroad ruggedness.
