Land Rover’s smallest sports utility is set to become a family of models, all from Chery.

LAND Rover and China … the story so far has been interesting.

The big headline came in 2019, when Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) won a landmark case in China against a Chinese company, Jiangling Motor Corporation (JMC), for copying the Range Rover Evoque.

The court ruled that the Landwind X7, produced by JMC, directly copied five unique features of the Evoque.

As a result, the court ordered JMC to cease production, sales, and marketing of the Landwind X7 and to pay compensation to JLR.

It was a rare victory for a foreign company in a Chinese intellectual property dispute.

Going forward, another Chinese company is having a go at building a Land Rover, this time a Freelander. This time the project has total JLR support, because it’s a project with a long-term manufacturing partner in China, Chery.

JLR chief executive officer Adrian Mardell has related plans for revitalising a model name that hasn’t had a place in the showroom since 2015, when Freelander 2 ended production, 18 years after the original came out.

It will become a nameplate for a new family of Chinese-made models, initially just sold in China but set to branch out into right hand drive, starting in the United Kingdom, before the end of the decade.

The first product of what will be a Freelander family will, according to the magazine, be “a chunky but rakish crossover” designed by JLR chief creative officer Gerry McGovern, who ‘fathered’ the original and follow-up models.

The website for Britain’s ‘The Autocar’ says Chery will engineer the cars using its own electrified platforms.

JLR says the collaboration creates “mutually beneficial prospects for the future” and proceed under a new tie-up, called Chery Jaguar Land Rover (CJLR).

Mardell says the plan leverages the individual strengths of the two companies, utilising Chery’s production, development resources and scale, together with the design capabilities and heritage of Land Rover.

Chery currently builds the Chinese-market long-wheelbase versions of the Range Rover Evoque SUV and Jaguar XE and XF sedans, plus the Discovery Sport, which superseded Freelander in 2016.

All those cars will be replaced by new Freelander-branded models.

“Of course, these will be cars designed with our involvement, but off a Chinese platform with Chinese tech and the Chinese cost base,” Mardell is quoted as saying.

“So (they) should be absolutely perfect for the market there. This will allow the joint venture and our plant in Changshu to flourish over time.”

Mardell admitted to the Autoexpress website that CJLR’s profitability has been declining, but he is confident that the new Freelander range is the “solution to the problem that was facing us and one that is very good for us, both in terms of licence revenue but also in terms of our 50 percent share of the profits of that joint venture.”

No specific details about the new Freelander models have been announced yet, but JLR says they will be “mainstream electric vehicles.”

The first fully electric JLR off-road capable SUV coming here is the fully battery-compelled version of the Range Rover, set to be in circulation before year-end.