Mitsubishi L200 Pick Up
On sale 1st March 2006

Life can suddenly spring a delightful surprise on you, when you are least expecting it! Such as today, when I was trying to park a huge SUV and a man walked out of a nearby building and moved a car out of the end space of a spot which was right in front of me! Never, have I been so grateful.

I’m sure that the construction apprentice who goes to get into a new Mitsubishi L200 pick up will also think that life really is wonderful sometimes. Instead of the expected hard seat and radio and heating if he’s lucky, he could well find himself in the sort of luxurious environment you would find in an up market saloon.

The new Mitsubishi L200, which goes on sale on the 1st March 2006, has a top of the range which will be competing with the numerous SUVs that are on the road. There is the functional 4Work and 4Life models, which the apprentice is more likely to use, but even these models have a CD player with MP3 player, air conditioning and airbags.

Move on up the range to the Warrior, Animal and the new Elegance models and you will find DVD, sat nav, heated electrically adjustable leather seats and CD autochanger. The Elegance is the model that will appeal to customers who might otherwise have chosen an SUV. However, although Mitsubishi says that ride and suspension have been improved over the predecessor, I didn’t find it as comfortable as an SUV.

Certainly, comfort isn’t usually one of the criteria for buyers of pick ups. One of the major reasons that people buy them, apart from to use as a work horse, is the advantages of Benefit in Kind taxation. Although this tax will increase to £3000 for drivers using a pick up as a company vehicle, this is still significantly less than the charge for an equivalently priced car. A 40% taxpayer running an L200 Warrior and free fuel could save around £2,500 in tax when compared with a car.

So why else would you buy an L200? Well it has curves that are guaranteed to be the envy of onlookers and the cause of sleepless nights for square box competitors. It is shorter and narrower than its main competitor, the Nissan Navara, so easier to use on UK roads. What makes it more car like, is its fantastic turning circle of 5.9m, which Mitsubishi says is the best in its class.

The L200, is Mitsubishi’s most popular model and is available as a single cab, club cab or double cab. It boasts the longest cabin space of any vehicle in the pick up market, with more front and rear headroom than the previous model.

It won the gruelling Dakar Rally on eleven occasions, and has a new common rail turbo diesel 2.5DiD engine, which is the only pick up with an engine, which is Euro IV compliant. It is 17.5% faster, has 30% more torque and 26% improvement in fuel economy compared with its predecessor.

At its launch, I drove the Warrior model, which Mitsubishi says will be the best seller, on the track and off road. Unique to the pick up sector is its Active Stability and Traction Control, which enabled it to take a roundabout of cones at speed and not lose it once. Mitsubishi is hoping the new L200 will achieve 4 stars in the EuroNCAP rating, which would make it the only pick up to achieve this accolade.

It proved a safe proposition, when I carried out emergency braking and Mitsubishi says it will brake 4 metres shorter than a Navara, about the length of a bus queue. It has both ABS and EBD as standard.

Off road, the L200 has high ground clearance and the torque of the new diesel engine took me up slippery banks of mud with ease.

It did however fail my agility test. I didn’t find it very easy to manoeuvre due to the steering. Despite having rack and pinion powered steering, it took a lot of turns to actually get anywhere, hard work and very un-car-like.

Mitsubishi says that the new L200 has a better than the competition residual value, better service, maintenance and repairs and better insurance quotes. With these predicted benefits, Mitsubishi is predicting sales of 9,000 units this year, with 13,000 vehicles in 2007. With prices starting at £12,249, rising to £19,999, life can prove surprising sometimes can’t it.

By Sue Cooke