Land Rover

One brand you’d expect to struggle in these eco-friendly times is Land Rover.

With its range of large off-roaders, the British firm has its work cut out to minimise its environmental impact.

Bosses are doing their best to clean up their gas-guzzling image. Since 2006, the company has run a carbon offset scheme, which it claims balances out the CO2 emissions of every car sold for the first 45,000 miles of its life.

Crucially, engineers have also been working to reduce the pollutants put out in the first place – and the first result of this is the Freelander TD4_e. It mates a 2.2-litre diesel engine and six-speed manual gearbox to a stop-start system, and promises to emit 179g/km and return 42.2mpg fuel economy.

This compares with the regular TD4’s 194g/km and 37.2mpg. The TD4_e isn’t as clean as rivals such as the Volvo XC60 DRIVe, but it does at least keep its four-wheel-drive transmission and, importantly, remains as capable off-road.

The new Discovery 4 misses out on stop-start, although its fresh 3.0-litre V6 diesel engine claims a nine per cent improvement in emissions and consumption than the less powerful 2.7 TDV6 it replaces.

Even the supercharged 5.0-litre petrol unit in the Range Rover and Range Rover Sport has been cleaned up – it’s now 5.6 per cent and 6.2 per cent more efficient respectively.

Looking to the future, Land Rover is teaming up with sister firm Jaguar to develop kinetic energy recovery and a diesel/electric hybrid.

Plus, the green oval is working with engineering specialist Ricardo on petrol engines that switch between two stroke and four stroke to cut CO2.

BEST ECO BUY: Freelander TD4_e