Land Rover has been through quite a bit over the recent past with Tata taking over ownership from Ford of the British marque. During all the meetings between Ford, Tata and unions, production of course continued at Land Rover's Halewood Operations on Merseyside where employees today put the finishing touches to their 100.000^th Freelander 2 (or Land Rover LR2 for our American readers).

Land Rover started production of the all-new Freelander 2 model just 17 months ago. The milestone car is a Rimini Red 2.2 liter diesel en will be shipped to the city of Surgut in Russia's Central Siberian Plateau. The Freelander2 is very popular in Russia with over 12,000 units sold there making it the third largest market for Land Rover, but the Freelander2 has also proven to be a hot commodity in emerging markets such as China and the Middle East.

Thomas Klein, Operations Director at Halewood said: "The 100,000th Freelander is an important milestone for the plant – Freelander 2 helped Land Rover achieve its best ever sales year in 2007 and has won several major awards in its first 12 months in the market place. I'd like to congratulate the Halewood workforce on this fantastic team achievement.”