The CB40 Project

Details: Category: Freelander 1; Last Updated on Sunday, 02 January 2011 23:43; Written by Site Admin; Hits: 2898

The first Freelander model was a product of Land Rover's CB40 project, which was intended to develop a new 'baby Land Rover'. However, the CB40 story is a long one...

cb40mule

CB40 project test vehicle - the floorpan, engine and drivetrain is Freelander.
The Maestro van body was adapted with longer front wings and wheel spats to suit.

Pic by Dave Neeson (Dunsfold 2009)

Rumours and the occasional photograph of CB40 project vehicles had been circulating for a couple of years, sometimes referred to as CB40 'Adventurer' or even 'Highlander'. Photos looked like the CRV, and rumours spoke of features such as a monocoque body and independent strut suspension - features that should be on a car and not a 'proper' Land Rover! The sceptics need not have feared though. Although the Freelander does not have the off-road ability of a Defender, it is surprisingly capable and easily outperforms the RAV4 and the CRV.

The Freelander is one of those cars that has changed the course of Land Rover's destiny, and yet, much of its design and concept comes via Land Rover's close links to Rover Cars. Without doubt, had it not been for the Rover engineers, designers and stylists at Canley and Gaydon, the Freelander would never have happened.

To trace the ancestry of the Freelander, one does not go back to 1994, when project CB40 was officially christened, but way back to the late 1980s, when finishing off the Discovery programme, the idea of a developing a smaller brother to it was first put forward.

In 1989 Land Rover and Rover had become closer than they had been since the 1960s; the days of The Rover Company. So in 1989, the decision was made to develop the small Land Rover under the codename, "Lifestyle". It soon became apparent that this was a major technical turning point for the company, and a team comprising of Rover and Land Rover engineers was put together to develop the new car. This was an entirely logical decision to make in hindsight, but it caused much discussion within both companies at the time.

Given that all Land Rovers to this point had been old school off-roaders, comprising of a boxy body atop a supremely able ladder frame separate chassis, "Lifestyle" was to be a radical departure. Therefore, a monocoque chassis - Land Rover's first - would be required.

Pathfinder

Before long, "Lifestyle's" wheelbase had been lengthened and the project was renamed Pathfinder.

Because the development of the new car was very much a joint Rover Cars/LR effort, the new car eventually evolved into two distinct forms. The thinking behind this was simple: the company wanted to see which marque would be ideally placed to sell the new car, and as a result, the two versions were different enough to warrant distinct styling and engineering of the same body and platform.

Pathfinder originally started out with a plethora of MPV-like features, such as swivelling seats. It was given a utilitarian look, and conceived in quite different three- and five-door guises. Various styling themes were tried, and the Rover theme was particularly interesting: Styled with the Rover family "face". The Canley-built prototype was tried with varying mechanical configurations, including two and four wheel drive. The simpler car used Maestro style rear suspension.

According to a project insider, Pathfinder became the object of a degree of controversy and political in-fighting. Land Rover's people felt that a more complex four-wheel-drive car was the product of their company, and so, fought hard against the Rover version making headway in the company's forward plans. He also stated, "Land Rover decided they needed the (smaller) car for its fuel consumption (fleet average fuel economy was on the horizon in Europe by now, similar to CAFE in the US), which forced a restyle to a Land Rover."

As the programme continued at Canley, it was shown to management for its appraisal. Given that the BAe years were marked by a sense of financial constraint, it comes as no surprise that the decision to go with Land Rover over Rover was mirrored by the board, which felt that only one of these models should be developed into a production car. The Board's decision was an easy one, and in effect, it had already been made: the Land Rover. It was the more established brand for niche vehicles, and as it was a four-wheel-drive car wearing the badge, a healthy premium could be charged for it.

By this time, the Discovery had been launched to wide acclaim, and confidence was high that the trick of opening new markets could be repeated further down the scale. That left Rover's MPV style two wheel drive Pathfinder version high and dry, just as the MPV market was about to blossom.

Oden

Now that the programme was purely Land Rover, it was renamed Oden. The two LR body styles, which had been set early in the Pathfinder programme remained, and it is heartening to see that they remained largely unaltered through to the launch of the final car some seven years later.

Although the Board had given a direction for the design team, it had still to approve it for production. Styling and marketing might have been on its way, with the full-size clay models and engineering prototypes having made a big impression, but the engineering of the new car still had some way to go. Like so many other projects developed by Rover during the early 1990s, Rover Special Products became involved in the evolution of Pathfinder.

Up to this point, Pathfinder had been undergoing some growing pains - whether to use the Maestro or 800 platform as a basis? How much engineering to carry over? What engines? What drivetrain? It was a slow process, and was part of an exceptionally fertile period in Rover's history. Rover Special Products decided it was time to give the board something concrete to look at.

The vehicle was called Cyclone, and it ended up being vitally important in the development of the new car. It had intended to do little more than whet the appetites of the Board; to show them what the company should be building. "Cyclone was a reworked version of one of the development tools nicknamed the "Cut-and-Shuttle" created from a Honda Civic Shuttle. The Cut-and-Shuttle had a raised ride height care of machined blocks of 3" steel bar stock and was used as proof of concept.", according to a project insider.

Cyclone was bristling with youth-oriented styling features, such as a funky interior and OTT side graphics. When shown to the Board, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive, and so it was decided there and then - the car would be going into production. So, although Pathfinder had been in development for four years by this point, it was only Cyclone's appearance that galvanized management into action. Perhaps it was also the product situation that helped them make up their mind. LR Project Director Dick Elsy summed-up the sitation thus (when speaking in 1997): "When we stood back and looked at the situation, it became more and more obvious that there was a blank space in the Land Rover product plan about three years ahead. So we set ourselves the rather ambitious target of plugging it with the definitinve leisure 4WD vehicle". Mind you, it wasn't that ambitious, if one concluded that a great deal of work had been done on Pathfinder in the preceding four years.

Now that the Board gave the car the go-ahead, it could be given a new title: CB40. The signified the start of the major push to get the new car into production, and as Dick Elsy had been behind the Cyclone model, he was chosen to head up the productionisation process. Given that all the Rover models in development at the time were given "R" codes, it seems odd that Freelander was called CB40. Simple really: according to Dick Elsy, it was named after the room in which it was created, Canley Building 40.

BMW step in...

While all this was going on, BMW and then owners British Aerospace were finalizing a deal, which would see the Germans buying the Rover Group for £800 million. The takeover officially took place in January 1994, and the first many of the company's staff knew about it was when they saw it on the BBC. The day after the takeover, Bernd Pischetsrieder and Wolfgang Reitzle took a lightning tour of the British facilities to see what the current situation was at Rover, and what was coming in the pipeline. To say that they were delighted with the CB40 was an understatement: one thing the Germans truly appreciated, was the value of Land Rover, and anything which would increase Land Rover volumes without damaging its reputation, was a godsend. The CB40 was one such godsend. According to Dick Elsy, Pischetsrieder made one suggestion regarding the design of the CB40, something which he demonstrated using black tape... the suggestion was implemented.

Using the money that flowed in from Germany, development was quickly ramped up, and thanks to improvements in CAD/CAM technology, the process was accelerated somewhat. A third production line was installed at the Solihull factory, a new paint shop was also opened, and was heralded as the largest of its type in Europe at the time of the Freelander's launch in 1997.

Luckily the engine choice had become a no-brainer by 1994: the ideal unit was the light and torquey Rover K-Series engine, which Rover had developed into a 1.8-litre version for their upcoming MGF model. The diesel engine decided upon was the newly developed L-Series unit, which had only seen service in the Rover 620 at this time. These units were mounted transversely and were mated to the ubiquitous PG1 gearbox.

BMW renamed the project L20 as part of the new model designations across the company, but strangely this nomenclature did not stick, and it continued to be referred to as CB40 by everyone, including the press at launch time.

Gerry McGovern was brought in to oversee the transformation from Pathfinder to CB40, and following his work on the MGF and various versions of the big-selling R8, he might not have seemed the ideal choice, given his sports car pedigree. However, the results speak for themselves. According to McGovern, it was also easy to identify what defined the style of the Freelander: "It's the screen angle. And the way the doors slope in at the tops, the tumblehome. It's also the rounded shape of the car. Most of all, it's an absence of gimmicks. Look at the cars we consider classics: the proportions are right from all angles, and they don't need much ornamentation. That's the secret - no gargoyles".

Freelander

Rover had real trouble finding a suitable name for its new small Land Rover. Project manager Peter Kinnaird recalled, "It was in a long list of possibles for a relatively long time, but the choice was made only a few months before its launch. I guess you could say we agonized over it a bit. 'Adventurer' was in the running for a while. The name, 'Highlander' (also considered for Discovery), which so many people believed we would use, is actually owned by Volvo." A tough choice then, but one that proved clever.

In the end, Elsy's target was met, and the Freelander was first shown to the press at the Frankfurt Motorshow in 1997. The press loved it: here was a car that could stand toe-to-toe with the Japanese SUVs that had begun to flood the market from the mid-1990s, and beat them at their own game. Most importantly, it possessed more badge kudos than the rest.

Sadly, Land Rover was a casualty of BMW's pull out of Rover in 2001: the company was sold to Ford for $1.5 billion, which meant that the bright star of Rover's mid-range now belonged to the Americans. Even so, they did not drastically change the Freelander during the early years of their tenure of Land Rover, instead they continued the process of tightening up build quality and reliability.

If you can provide further information or pictures of CB40 vehicles, please get in touch.

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