The Land Rover Freelander is a compact

Compact SUV

Compact SUV is a class of small sport utility vehicles with a length roughly between . This class should not be confused with mini SUV, which refers to smaller vehicles.- Background :...

 crossover SUV

Sport utility vehicle

A sport utility vehicle is a generic marketing term for a vehicle similar to a station wagon, but built on a light-truck chassis. It is usually equipped with four-wheel drive for on- or off-road ability, and with some pretension or ability to be used as an off-road vehicle. Not all four-wheel...

 made by Land Rover

Land Rover

Land Rover is a British car manufacturer with its headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, United Kingdom which specialises in four-wheel-drive vehicles. It is owned by the Indian company Tata Motors, forming part of their Jaguar Land Rover group...

.
The current generation is sold as the LR2 in North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

 and as the Freelander 2 in Europe. It uses a monocoque

Monocoque

Monocoque is a construction technique that supports structural load by using an object's external skin, as opposed to using an internal frame or truss that is then covered with a non-load-bearing skin or coachwork...

 (unibody) structure, unlike traditional SUVs built with a body-on-frame

Body-on-frame

Body-on-frame is an automobile construction method. Mounting a separate body to a rigid frame that supports the drivetrain was the original method of building automobiles, and its use continues to this day. The original frames were made of wood , but steel ladder frames became common in the 1930s...

 design.
Market research by the Rover Group

Rover Group

The Rover Group plc was the name given in 1986 to the British state-owned vehicle manufacturer previously known as British Leyland or BL. Owned by British Aerospace from 1988 to 1994, when it was sold to BMW, the Group was broken up in 2000 with the Rover and MG marques being acquired by the MG...

 in the late 1980s suggested that Land Rover could enter the compact SUV

Compact SUV

Compact SUV is a class of small sport utility vehicles with a length roughly between . This class should not be confused with mini SUV, which refers to smaller vehicles.- Background :...

 market segment. In the early 1990s, the Rover Group had a restricted product development budget and looked for a partner to develop the project, which was codenamed CB40 (after Canley Building 40, where the concept was initially developed).