Car review: Mitsubishi L200 Barbarian X – macho aesthetics but lacking in thrills

Where’s Animal? And I don’t mean the Muppet. I couldn’t help asking myself this while looking over the latest Mitsubishi pick-up truck, the L200 Series 6, which can trace its ancestry all the way back to 1978.

There’s a Barbarian in the range, obviously, and a Warrior and a top of the line Barbarian X, with premium leather and everything. Also a 4Life, which sounds a bit wimpy in this Game of Thrones-style line-up, and a Challenger, but the pick-ups with the laity “Animal” decals I used to see pottering around with ladders and buckets in the back of them, well that type has fled. In fact I think some time ago.

The club cab basic version, more of your classic pick-up look than the full four-door variety, is also almost extinct. This is now only available in the most basic trim, with steel rather than giant alloy wheels and with tiny rear seats, but I quite like the purer vibe of it. Otherwise the L200 range comprises roomy four-door five-seaters with loads of luxurious touches and kit.

This all gives a you clue as to who the Mitsubishi L200 is aimed at: tax efficient small businesspeople and middle managers who think they’re Jon Snow or the Night King. Macho types. Builders with extra big tool belts and biceps. Tax lawyers with bulging briefs off to their second home in the Cotswolds. In fact Mitsubishi would probably call their car the L200 Tyrion Lannister if it wasn’t for copyright issues.

You see the double cab pick-up is a very accomplished piece of engineering, now with more advanced safety features and easily switchable two- or four-wheel drive with low and high gears plus hill descent control and a special button for snow... no hill farmer or head of finance will ever get into trouble with one of these on the way to a ewe in distress or an assignment with the wine section in the surviving branches of Waitrose.

open image in gallery

But this is also a smart piece of financial engineering too, which is why you see so many on the roads and why Britain is the number one market in Europe for these hunky machines. Because HMRC classify the L200 as a commercial vehicle (as it has a payload in excess of the 1 tonne requirement), it has a very low benefit in kind loading and tax liability for the company car driver – in effect a negligible tax bill for being bunged a nice £30,000 company car to bum around in.

The trick then is to transform what is supposed to be a van into something more like a four-door saloon or SUV-style product and to make driving the thing as comfy and car-like as possible. If you register it in the name of your bona fide company too, then neither is it liable for VAT. A fiscal wonder.

Fill her up with ted diesel and you’ve got virtually free transport: a luxurious go-anywhere car with five seats, 360-degree camera and a heated steering wheel – for next to nothing. They could call it the Borismobile, because you can have your cake and eat it. Can’t you?

Not quite. There are snags. Yes, it is incredibly capable, especially off road, and it will calmly tow 3.5 tonnes over any terrain. It looks pretty cool, in a butch kind of way. Mitsubishi call the front of the new car “diamond shield”, but it still looks like it’s been modelled on the Terminator. Some people like that.

open image in gallery

More off-putting are some of the driving characteristics. It is still a bit of a truck with its primitive suspension – you’ll notice the difference if you move out of a Range Rover or an X5 into one of these. In a bid to comply with tough EU emissions rules, the L200 now runs a smaller less powerful engine, and this has done its acceleration on the road no favours.

It makes the most of its power, especially at low speeds/revs but it feels too sluggish and the gearbox is a bit unwilling to help it get a move on. Left to their own devices they’d make it go like a Mitsubishi Evo rally car, but then again that’s no longer sold in Europe because of poor CO2 figures.

There’s an exceptionally big tank for AdBlue to help clean up the exhaust gasses, so they really are throwing everything at the problem, but only because the authorities are forcing them to. One day cars such at this may be extinct.

Anyway even making allowances it’s no thrill to drive. It is quite refined when it has wound itself up and the ride gets much better at motorway speeds; against that is a bit of the jitters when you’re tootling around the average potholed British street.

On the whole you get a more rounded, more able product than the main rivals from VW (Amarok), Toyota (HiLux) and Nissan (Navara), and Ford (the newish Ranger). The Fiat Fullback, by the way is a rebadged L200 with a shorter warranty, puzzlingly. The Mercedes-Benz X-class is more or less a Navara, but with some of their own engines and dash design. Like Chabuddy G and his Sprinter van in People Just Do Nothing, you can always say you “drive a Merc”.

Choosing between that lot is largely a matter of taste and snobbery, but the Mitsubishi is thoroughly class competitive, with the one caveat that there is no built in sat nav. As with all Mitsubishi’s models instead you’ll need to use Google Maps or some such app via your smartphone instead.

However, for sheer value you’d want to opt for the less sophisticated or glam Isuzu D-Max, still favoured by many a muddy rural type, or the SsangYong Musso, a good £5,000 cheaper than the L200. That one’s a bit more of an animal though.