This was my first Freelander 2 circa 2012. Well, a racer based loosely on an F2 anyway.




I decided that the project would cost in excess of £15K just to build it up using a Disco 2 as a donor, so sold it on as you see it in the above pic.
It's currently on eBay at £10K,still unfinished. I know so far this guy has ploughed over £20K in to the vehicle. He's had independent suspension fitted and a BMW M-Sport engine fitted in the rear. It's nearly there and I reckon another 5 grand could see it finished, but given the rear engine set up it has now, there's no room in the rear for camping gear , so no good for me. Had it been built how I was going to do it, that clamshell rear would have been cavernous. I could even have gone on holiday in it. Sadly not now.
All is not lost though. I am contemplating building an off road style Freelander 2, bucket seats, full interior roll cage etc.........just looking for the right donor vehicle. Ideally based on an S or GS mode (no sunroof)l. i6 would be ideal.

that looks like it would have been an amazing motor....

Interesting that you doing it with a Discovery 2 as a donor, I seem to remember a company that was building off road/rally spec vehicles using D2 V8 chassis, engine etc with a modified FL1 body shell on top.

The completed motors looked like a massively lifted FL1 with a V8 lump.

Yes, that was the D-Lander. Built by North Off Road on the Discovery 1 chassis as the original Freelander shares the same 100" wheelbase. There were some built on D2 chassis but not many.
However, this was their Freelander 2 version which had a space frame chassis(trying to emulate the original Bowler Nemesis , based on the RR Sport , also with a space framed chassis) and this is where things got ugly. You needed an SVA at the time.

Without going in to detail, a customer sued North Off Road over the F2 version, won the case and North Off Road effectively went out of business, selling off both the original D-Lander jigs and moulds and the F" jigs and moulds.

Anyway, I bought mine when North were flogging off the gear. Unbeknown to me, it was the actual vehicle that was the focus of the court case, but mostly stripped down to how it was as presented in my earlier picture.
I was told that it would never see the road if I built it up the way it was. But that there was a way around this and was to go the route of the original D-Lander and use the donor vehicles chassis. All the components of the Discovery 2 remain where they would on the chassis thus making for a quicker build. However the D2 chassis is again a 100" wheelbase and the F2 is 104", meaning 4" had to be added to the wheelbase of the chassis. But once done, there would be no need for the SVA. As in effect it would then be classed as a body swap, retaining enough of the original components of the D2 to retain the D2 status.Although you'd still (at the time) needed a VIC check and would probably ended up on a Q plate due to the chassis lengthening which would lose you points.
I'd have loved to have finished it this way, but there were so many other parts that needed to be fabricated, like a floor pan, gearbox tunnel and inner wheel arches, and that's were the real money goes as there's nothing "off the shelf" for these areas.
To mind, I can think of only 1 F2 based vehicle that was ever completed and that was the original demonstrator. I spoke to the guy that owned it and he said that there are things that were badly designed from the off.
This is his original vehicle. Again, all mechanicals are Disco 2.

Click image to enlarge

That was it.... D-Lander .

now you mention all the wheelbase etc I remember looking it up on t'interweb having seen it mentioned.

It looked an awesome beast.

A couple of years back a rally event stage was hosted in Sherwood Pines (forestry commission) and there was an M-Sport Freelander running in that (awesome sight) and a Disco 1V8 in M-Sport blue (scarily awesome sight on the bends).

I would love to see a similar FL2 giving it some on a rally stage