MOTORING / The battle for Land-Rover Britain: The Yanks have joined the fight for the 4x4 market. Roger Bell on Chrysler's Cherokee, Ford's Maverick and other top contenders

THE all-American Jeep is no longer the Gee-Pee (general purpose) utility that once mobilised the US army: the workhorse has grown into the suave Chrysler Cherokee - overweight, over here, and bidding for a slice of Land-Rover's success. It is not alone. Some of the biggest guns in the industry are now targeted on Solihull, home of the staunch Defender (the old Land-Rover) and its more sophisticated offspring, the Discovery and the Range Rover, all-terrain wheels for the urban jungle.

In the US, the popularity of recreational 4x4s, known there as sports utilities, is understandable. Six time-zones wide, America is big enough to absorb the one million new offroaders that take to the dirt annually, many of them Jeeps. Here in crowded Britain, where motoring off the beaten track arouses almost as much hostility as fox hunting, off-roaders make little more sense as everyday wheels than wet suits in a Jacuzzi. Yet one of the year's safer predictions is that 4x4 sales will break even 1992's recession-bucking record. Ford's forthcoming Maverick, poised to increase interest in what Land-Rover terms 'lifestyle vehicles', will see to that if the Jeep does not.

Of the big three US manufacturers, General Motors was the first seriously to challenge the supremacy of Land-Rover in Britain. Since its introduction just over a year ago, GM's Vauxhall Frontera (Isuzu Amigo/Rodeo elsewhere) has extended the frontiers of the UK's growing off-roader market, not eroded Land- Rover's dominant share of it. As a sales incentive, Frontera buyers are now being offered a free one-day off-road driving course. Now comes the ubiquitous Jeep, made by Chrysler since 1987. It is the first of several new US Chryslers earmarked for Britain.

There are two big surprises about Ford's new Maverick, out this summer: it has taken so long to arrive; and Ford is not actually making it. The product of a cost-cutting collaborative venture, the Maverick is to be produced in Spain by Nissan. Nearly half the plant's annual output of 50,000 vehicles will be badged as Fords, many for sale in Britain. The others, known internally as Nissan ETs (for Extra Terrestrials?), will consolidate existing Japanese opposition - the Suzuki Vitara, Daihatsu Fourtrak, Isuzu Trooper, Mitsubishi Shogun and others - in the only market segment that an indigenous British manufacturer still dominates at home. Last year was Land-Rover's best ever for UK sales.

Like the Frontera and new Jeeps, the Maverick / ET will come with part-time fourwheel drive which Land-Rover asserts is technically inferior to its own permanent 4x4 drive systems. Perhaps. To most buyers who would not know a diff-lock from a drive-shaft, however, it probably does not matter. Two-door fiveseater and four-door seven-seater Mavericks will be on offer, with petrol or diesel engines.

Can profitable Land-Rover, jewel in the crown of the Rover Group, withstand this growing opposition? L-R's success is rooted as much in business acumen as sound design. Not so many years ago, the company's mainstream business was selling workhorses to Third World countries. Anticipating their economic collapse - no cash, no sales - it diversified, first by moving the Range Rover (now 22 years old) inexorably upmarket, later by launching the Discovery to create an intermediate model for all those active New Age lifestylers.

Through the Defender and its derivatives, L-R is to some extent protected from market downturns by military contracts (the US army, one of 150 forces supplied by Land-Rover, recently ordered a fleet of Defender-based gunfighters). The gas, electricity and water companies, most of them doing very nicely since privatisation, are also good customers.

But it is the buoyancy of Discovery and Range Rover sales that better reflects the recession-proof state of the off-roader sector, especially as the Discovery has chased the Range Rover upmarket: the pounds 22,000 four-door Discovery automatic occupies the same market niche now as the RR did a few years ago.

The success of both model ranges has as much to do with indulgence and image as needs and ability. Get behind the wheel of the new Range Rover Vogue LSE - pounds 40,000- worth of air-suspended, stump-pulling opulence - and you cannot escape its intoxicating appeal, even though it is palpably slower, thirstier, noisier and less comfortable than the luxury saloons from BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar with which it competes on price and prestige. The appeal of all 4x4s, Range Rovers in particular, is rooted in fantasy, being able to reach parts ordinary cars cannot. The gymkhana field that would bog down a big Volvo estate (one of the victims of the off-roader boom) is kids' stuff to an irrepressible force like a Range Rover in low first. A high driving position reinforces the smug sense of well-being you get at the wheel of a heavyweight off-roader.

L-R sees three distinct segments in the 4x4 market (which does not include four-wheel- drive saloons such as Audi's Quattros). At the bottom is the Defender, farmer's friend and military do-all. At the top comes the Range Rover LSE, which has more 4x4 opposition than L-R would have you believe. Mercedes' G-wagen is no real threat to it in Britain, but the pounds 32,000 Toyota Landcruiser and Jeep Cherokee Limited LE are cheaper options. The expanding leisure-orientated ground in between is headed by the Discovery; production was recently increased to meet demand.

Fewer than 29,000 off-roaders were sold in Britain in 1991. Last year, registrations soared to 50,000 - nearly a quarter of them Discoveries, easily the country's best-selling 4x4, despite prices in the pounds 17,000- pounds 21,000 range. Next in popularity come the 1.6-litre Suzuki Vitaras ( pounds 9,500- pounds 12,000) and the larger-engined Vauxhall Fronteras ( pounds 12,000 to over pounds 16,000). Jeeps span an even wider pounds 12,500- pounds 22,000 price bracket. Mavericks / ETs are expected to cost from pounds 12,500 to over pounds 17,000.

Land-Rover, the world's only major builder of dedicated 4x4s, is no longer starved of funds - as was once the case in the bad old days of British Leyland. Last year alone, pounds 100m was pumped into new facilities and product development. Such investment is crucial if L-R is to fend off big-gun assailants such as Ford, GM and Nissan before the Range Rover is replaced in 1994 by an all-new model, known internally as Pegasus. It might well need wings.-

(Photograph omitted)