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Mitsubishi L200 Animal car review

18/09/09

Price22,967
We like...Toughness, off-road gearing
We don't...Low-geared steering

Big, useful pick-up here gets a surfer-dude makeover. Is it now enough of all-rounder to take the place of your regular car?The world’s best-selling vehicle is a pick-up truck. And, although it’s a Ford and not the Mitsubishi L200 we're testing here, it’s not hard to see why they’re so liked. Big with a high-up driving position, huge ground clearance, full-on four-wheel drive capability, seats for five and that whacking great load bay out back.

But the one we have here is the Animal version of the L200, which puts a surf-style design over the body and blue and leather seats with matching dials into the cabin. With its climate controlled air conditioning, 10-CD stereo, standard satellite navigation and fancy logd door kick plates (which light up after dark), it’s not for builders, unless they’re rich and fussy, too, so that they won’t plonk anything too dirty atop those fancy seats.

Talk to an accountant about one of these and the benefits are clear. If you run a VAT-registered business, you can claim back the VAT on one. And if you run it as a company car, you pay tax at a flat rate rather than on a portion of the list price (as you would for a new car).

Mitsubishi L200 Animal Parked at the kerb, it looks mean, purposeful and to some eyes, kinda good-looking. But don’t fall for its looks and buy one just because. It is truck-like to drive.

The driving position is unusual because, although you sit high, the floor is raised so that you perch on the seat with little support under your thighs. The cabin is narrow and you may find a squeeze if you’re very tall, or fat. The three rear seats offer good headroom and enough legroom but they’re narrow for three adults. And there’s nowhere in the back where you can stow luggage out of view. One unexpected bonus, however, is that you can, at the touch of a switch, lower the cabin’s rear window.

The dash is logical but tough and old-school in styling. The sat nav is touch-screen but also operates from a TV-style remote plipper. We found it such a fiddle to use that eventually we gave up on it and looked at a map.

That 2.5 diesel is clattery and it packs 165bhp, more than you’ll find in other L200s. While it pulls hard through its lower gears, it is never quick. The steering is light but very low geared, making for plenty of wheel-shuffling just to emerge from a junction and on to a main road.

The L200 weaves and bobs if you put it along a badly-repaired urban road and, enter a bend in it with spirit and it will lean so far that you’ll be wondering when the door handles will start scraping the Tarmac (they won’t, of course: it just feels that way).

Mitsubishi L200 Animal On the motorway it feels settled and rides smoothly enough, though the motor drones at a cruise and, for us, gulped diesel at 27mpg over a 400-mile trip, driven sensibly. Fun to drive, it ain’t.

But it would make a fair job of getting somewhere rough and muddy. Most of the time it runs in rear-wheel drive, but a second gearlever lets the front wheels, join in, locks the diffs, or even brings in a separate set of lower gears for serious rock-crawling.

There’s not much we can say about the pick-up bay except that it’s there, covered in a tough, rubberised skin and you can sling up to 1050kgs of stuff aboard. Make sure that it’s securely tied down before you go anywhere though.

Should you buy one? It’s built to work hard, go anywhere and carry big loads. If you need all that – and fancy the posing cred that the ‘Animal’ package brings – it’s for you. But it is a truck, so don’t buy it to use as a car – because any number of tough-looking off-roaders will do that job for you far more successfully.

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