The automotive world is not just made of red italian sportscars and other luxury vehicles driven by football players with more muscle than brain...there are also cars for those who like the nature better than the city no matter what the landscape is(football players do?)...so, as you probably guessed, today we will talk about a 4x4 truck.
Taking a closer look at the market here, the japanese manufacturers don't offer that many "true" 4x4 vehicles despite having very large lineups. Toyota and Mitsubishi are the only ones, with their Land Cruiser and Pajero, to be on top of their game and internationally acclaimed, in that category.
Mitsubishi Pajero 2007 Test Drive, HDTV
(WMV9HD 720p Direct Download "Right click, Save as…")
Mitsubishi Pajero 2007 Test Drive, HDTV
(WMV9HD 720p Torrent "Right click, Save as…")
It all began with a concept-car at the 73'Tokyo Motor Show, but it is in 1982 that Mitsubishi started to sell it. With a new name and therefore a relative lack of image the Pajero competed in motorsports and in particular in the famous Paris-Dakar rally raid race.
It only took the Pajero 3 years to win the Dakar, the name and image was made, and Mitsubishi is still THE most successful manufacturer in this legendary race with 12 victories including 7 straight from 2001 until now!
With such a pedigree we felt we had to pay homage to this icon of the old school all wheel drive category, and we also decided, unlike most journalists, to focus on the off-road capacities of the vehicle. But Japan is not really the best country to do so and our knowledge of off-road driving being what it is...we enjoyed 14 hours of plane to reach France and "La Picardie" with its hilly plains and horrible weather conditions, lots of wind and rain (perfect for the camera man).
Once in France we headed to the Mitsubishi Headquarters in Paris, to take our new Pajero.
This gave us the opportunity to see that it was feeling alright in the Parisian urban jungle.
For this 4th generation, Mitsubishi tried to make it look as good as it drives, and even though the Range Rover remains the reference, we think that the design of the new Pajero, especially the short version, is really nice with a new front grill and more edges than on the previous version, the car is elegant and strong looking.
The inside is all about simplicity, after all this is not a luxury sedan... no complaints about the comfort or quality of the materials but our version had a pretty austere interior and dark colors, of course this doesn't alter the drivability of the car but a more attractive interior layout would have been appreciated.
The Pajero is sold by Mitsubishi in many countries with different motors. In Japan for example you can have a 3.8L MIVEC V6 engine producing 250HP and a torque of 338Nm. In France very few people would be willing to go for the big gasoline engine and Mitsubishi knows that, diesel is the way to go so what we got was a 3.2L inline 4 DI-D engine, 16 valves and common rail technology producing 170HP at 3.800rpm and 373Nm of torque at 2.000rpm.
This engine provided GOOD power regarding the nasty treatment we had for it, unfortunately the fuel consumption would jump up to 30 to 50 liter/100km in full off-road mode !! At this point, diesel is enjoyable, being 30 to 40% less expensive than gasoline.
After long hours on the highways we finally reached the small commune of Blicourt, north west of Picardie !
Time to thank the Defrance family for letting us "ploughing" their land during the test drive. As said before we are more used to driving on flat roads but with a surface of over 100 hectares our "playground" was large enough to be relatively safe.
As for any test drve we decided to set some rules up as following:
-anywhere a man can walk a Pajero should possibly drive
-testing the car ONLY on rainy days (easy)
-stock tyres no matter what
It is with these ridiculous rules in mind hat we headed to our playground, of course the weather was awful, everything and everybody was in place and ready.
In spite of roads as slippery as a skating rink we were surprised to easily overcome the different types of difficulties that were coming over, this is when we realized that the vehicle had a simply unbelievable potential.
After a couple kilometres it was obvious that the possibilities of this new Pajero were extremely high and how important the psychological part was when off roading...and the Mitsubishi sure can give a lot of confidence !
But don't try this at home !
Unless you feel like having the sufficient knowledge about the terrain that you're about to attack, hopefully it was my case as I spent most of my childhood riding this type of roads and bumps on motocross bikes...so driving over at 50+ miles per hour there had a bit of deja vu.
One more time I would like to insist on the incredible all-road abilities of the Pajero, the car simply feels at ease in
any type of situation and to test it I went through quite a lot of natural obstacles such as bumps, ruts, jumps, cracks, borders, ponds...anything you can think of when you dare to take a car in the countryside on a rainy day !
A sense of power and enjoyment that one can hardly feel on the usual "flat roads", immensely more boring.
Just like the previous versions this 2007 Mitsubishi appeared to us as an incredible machine able to take you anywhere you could possibly want, but in this, more than the car's, make sure that you have the adequate capacities and knowledge before getting in any kind of expedition!
Even though we've been lucky to enjoy such a big playground to test drive the off road abilities of the car we know that most of you will keep it on the clean and flat roads of your city so let me add a few lines about the handling and driving pleasure on regular roads.
As I mentionned before, driving in Paris equals using the good old law of the streets "the stronger the faster the better", just like in any other big city obviously...but we also had to go through trials and tribulations like tiny shopping mall's parking lots...on this particular point and despite its large dimensions (L:4.385m, l:1.875m, a height of 1.850m and 2.545m of wheelbase) the Pajero was easy to manouver, still, I would recommend the rear camera option for parallel parking.
On the highway nothing disappointing either, maybe a little lack of punch to overtake but this will depend on the engine offer that you'll have and that you can afford.
Alright! Time to end this review and clean the all muddy Pajero before bringing it back to its owner (yes we did that!)
As we are not off road specialists you may need to check other reviews for further details on technical 4x4 details like the 4 AWD modes available.
Yet, from our point view, we believe that in the hands of an experienced driver the potential of the new Pajero would be almost unlimited.
If for you, buying an all wheel drive beast like this one means more than crossing city curbs and that you're still looking for a vehicle that will feel at home on every terrain, then we completely recommend this 2007 Mitsubishi Pajero , especially in its short version, the perfect pick, the best of both worlds.
Posted on 10/03/07 By G-A.G
