there's offroaders and then again

What a wanker! - I'm glad he lost and got the £80,000 costs against him. I hope the judge went further and made the silly bugger go and enrol in a

4x4 course so he knows what he's doing. Trying to drive cross-axled with open diffs?... geez. He would have been better off spending some of his money on a diff lock and he'd be right. If I get that bad will someone please take me round behind the shed and shoot me!

-Craig.

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and yes he did lose the case reason- lack of (his) offroad driving > ability.

Looking forward to seeing his house go cheap on ebay...

On or around Thu, 06 Jul 2006 22:17:59 GMT, "Derek" enlightened us thusly:

and yes he did lose the case reason- lack of (his) offroad driving ability.>Derek

serves the silly sod right. You can get anything stuck if you try.

Brother in law has a standard 3.9SE rangie, auto box, which admittedly has a viscous middle diff, runs on Pirelli ST tyres and drives all over his farm, which has slippery clay and steep slopes, and has yet to get it stuck in such a way as to have to tow it out.

Tim Hobbs came up with the following;:

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> and yes he did lose the case reason- lack of (his) offroad driving>> ability. Derek

Yeah, the closing line was a corker ... ;)

But would you buy _anything_ from such a tosser?

I've mentioned things like cross-axle diff locks to inexperienced 4x4 drivers, some of whom have then said to me that their 4x4 doesn't need one as it drives all four wheels at once. When I've asked what it is, it's invariably an unmodified standard vehicle on road tyres, so it's a very common misconception.

Besides I thought the freeloader applied the brakes to the spinning wheels, or is that only higher models?

I thought that was the case too - traction control on all four wheels on the Freelander?? Not that I'm defending him - what a plonker! Risking your house over something like that??? If he wanted to drive up mountains why didn't he buy a Defender? Although like others have pointed out, you can get the best 4x4 stuck with no skill necessary.

Matt

OK, who is willing to post a resume of the article? Not everyone uses Mickeysoft browsers and compatible video viewers... (bloody BBC!)

Stuart

Works fine on Linux, with Kaffeine plugin. The codecs are free too.

Steve

Worked in Firefox under linux with the mplayer plugin, if you're using linux. If mac or other then gawd knows.

Not that interesting anyway, he drives a freeloader into a mild trough, it gets cross-axled and stops with two wheels spinning, he moans that it's not really four-wheel-drive (which is verging on a legitimate complaint IMHO). He drove it somewhere remote and got stuck, hence his complaint.

He did mention that the traction control wasn't helping, perhaps it's busted or he has a button-pressing problem.

There's more to computing than Linux

Hang on a mo! As far as I know there's no axle diff locks available for Freelanders - the designers in their wisdom have decided that such anitique things can be done away with by using traction control, hill descent and the new moving-off-on-steep-hills thinge.

Perhaps this case is the casue of the article in this months LRM about the new Freelander and how it is a "true off roader". There's quotes from some of the engineers who worked on it that sound more like some daft artist trying to justify sawing a cow in half, and some carefully staged pictures of it "off-roading". Even the film shown on the TV about the case show a Freelander doing nothing that a lot of ordinary cars couldn't do, certainly 4 wheel drive ones. And those two nice shiney tail pipes - how long are they going to last when truly off-road? They'd be gone on the first step on the Mam Torr "Fronterra" lane...... I don't count tracks used regularly by ordinary cars as off-road, the two lanes at Mam Torr were much more like it until they were "repaired".

Having seen a Freelander try an RTV trial, and be physically unable to complete sections that all other Land Rover marques have no trouble with (excluding driver error!), never mind the difficult bits, I have to say the bloke is right. The Freelander is a 4x4 car with some superior attributes for driving on unsurfaced roads and accross fields etc, but a true off-roader it isn't. Along with the CRV, Rav4, Suzuki Vitara, small Jeep thing, Range Rover Sport etc etc.

One quote in the LRM article is "At Land Rover we don't just build cars we develop icons". Sorry mate. LR haven't created an icon since Defender and Range Rover Classic, they've just produced cars and tried to cash in on the iconic image of those earlier vehicles.

All in my own opinion of course, and I am uninimous in this, but of all people I should be a nutural customer for a new vehicle, and I ain't!

Richard

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> and yes he did lose the case reason- lack of (his) offroad driving > > ability.

So what is the reference to a court case and losing his house?

What are you using ? There is Xine for just about everything.

Steve

He took them to court, and the only way he could pay the costs if he lost was to lose his house. Apparently he lost, though that wasn't in the clip.

Steve

More here:

Can't seem to find a text report, but this clip tells the story to the end.

DaveP

No me either, but from that report it sounds like he deserves everything he got. I like the way LR showed a video of them driving his car (successfully) through an off-road course to prove it worked! Bloke sounds even more like a knob in that report, telling LR that he was going to "bring them down"! PMSL Seems to be the sort of guy who would use the phrase "Do you know who I am?" to me. Sounds like the judge had the measure of him too.

Matt

Ah, the problem is that I'm in France, and the content is "UK only".

I don't think that's the only problem. Like others I can't see it in the UK either. It just locks up my machine.

Matthew Maddock uttered summat worrerz funny about:

I understand he may be at Billing.... at least it's somewhere to put up a tent ;-)

Lee D