New (NOT a Land Rover) Freelander 8 gets BMW iX3-style Panoramic display

The recently revealed Freelander 8 – a joint venture between JLR and Chery – comes with a huge cabin-spanning 46.3″ 8K display.

It’s more than a decade since the Land Rover Freelander was replaced by the Discovery Sport, bringing to an end the Freelander after nearly two decades.

With JLR splitting itself into ‘Brands’ – Range Rover, Defender and Discovery – there was no way back for the Freelander, we assumed, but that changed a couple of years ago when a new Freelander range was announced as a joint venture between JLR and China’s Chery and, so we thought, just for the Chinese market.

The first look we got at what to expect from the new Freelander brand was the arrival of the Freelander 97 Concept earlier this year, designed by JLR but underpinned by a Chery Platform and Tech and looking very like a Land Rover product concept.

It didn’t take long for the production take on the Concept 97 to arrive with the reveal of the Freelander 8 in April, a very Land Rover-like model and bigger than a Defender 110.

With the reveal of the Frefelander 8 all we got was a single exterior image, but now we get a first look at the interior (above).

The standout is what is probably the biggest screen in a production car at 46.3″ and spanning the cabin’s width, just like the screen in the new BMW iX3, and complemented by a 15.6″ infotainment screen in the middle with a row of physical buttons below.

Despite the Freelander’s reveal and the ‘China Only’ assertion initially, it looks like the Freelander 8 will go on sale in the UK, but not until 2027.