Mitsubishi L200 Warrior

It's time to welcome the leisure-orientated pickup truck in from the cold. It used to be that, despite their rufty-tufty appeal, even chrome-tarted double cab trucks were little more than glorified wheelbarrows, all noise, bounce and unpleasantness. But with the new Mitsubishi L200 Warrior all that has changed.You can buy this vehicle in the knowledge that it's more sophisticated SUV than machine-yard macho. It's got intelligent stability and traction control, ABS and EBD braking system, proper seatbelts all round, airbags across the front, ISOFIX child seat mounting points, crumple zones, side impact bars, sat-nav, and all manner of extras you wouldn't normally expect. Indeed in this form it's less scratch-and-sniff workhorse and more fragrant off-road saloon car with a simply massive boot.The Warrior is likely to be one of the top sellers of the range, and to my eye it's now one of the most attractive off-roaders on the market. It's the cheapest entry to the leisure-orientated double cabs, but it doesn't look like a budget car. For £16,999 you get that gorgeous rounded car-like front end that stares out on the world with the mean, take-em-all-on expression of a full-blown Dakar rally desert raider. This test car has the spec-standard chunky steel roll bar set off nicely by the optional lockable metal roll-top cargo protector which turns the back end into an easily accessed, weather-protected load bay.The engine is a 2477cc common-rail injected diesel unit with an intercooler which turns out 134bhp and 231lb/ft of torque. It's fed through a five-speed manual gearbox to haul the 1.8-tonne truck up to 62mph in 14.6 seconds before rumbling on up to a top speed just over 100mph. The official average fuel consumption is almost 33mpg which is reasonable compared to a similarly-sized SUV.If all this image stuff and acceleration data makes you think the hairy old brute has turned bouffant, think again. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I took it off the road and into the dirt, but disappointment never came into the equation.On the way to the quarry, sitting high up but feet-forwards, I'd gazed down on a very car-like interior all swooping curves and rounded edges. The cluster of silver-rimmed fruit-slice dials in front of me were stacked under a curved cowl and the only thing I didn't like was the rather tacky-looking silvered plastic - by the doorhandle it was already starting to get scratched through to the black.The dirt-taming toolkit looked impressive enough. The Warrior has Mitsubishi's Super Select four-wheel drive system. At the end of a stubby selector stick it offers two-wheel drive high and four-wheel drive high and low with the differential locked in. What it also has over the Easy Select system on the cooking grade models is the full-time four-wheel drive which can be engaged at any speed up to 62mph and uses a viscous coupling between front and rear axles. It splits torque 50/50 in normal conditions but if you start slipping at the front or back, some is fed out to where it can best be used.We'd have none of that in the quarry though. Just after pulling through the gate into the dirt it was low-range four-wheel drive with the locked diff and the stability control programme button switched off so that all the wheels would do what they could to keep us going.The course first snaked round the disused quarry - a roller-coaster of clay, frozen solid by six degrees of overnight frost. My head was chucked from side to side as we bounced and cross-axled over the unyielding landscape, I fell back in my seat as we thundered up brutal climbs, and hung forward in my seatbelt as we nosed over a the crest of a hill and plunged down a 50-foot slope that must have been within a degree or two of 45.The woodland section that followed was a series of tight turns between trees and boulders through deep, soft clay, cut in places into tramlines and punctuated by mud and water filled pits or lumpy descents and ascents through what would normally be a silent haven for the wild deer whose tracks we could see.The Warrior took everything I chucked it at - racing up the hills with eye-watering enthusiasm in low second, balancing the weight on the front axle down tail-skipping drops, ice-breaking though water as deep as the grille, squirming forward through rich dark loam like a snake. Was I impressed? God aye.For it to do all this while handling so well on the road was incredible. The big difference on the road was the Active Stability and Traction Control System which intelligently works out whether you're about to go slithering off at the corner and dabs on the appropriate brakes to prevent you meeting your probably deserved end. Traditionally a pickup should have real trouble here because in two-wheel drive all the power goes to the back axle where there's no weight to keep the wheels stuffed into the tarmac. It's the first time this technology has been available on a pickup.The double wishbone and coil front suspension, coupled with the revised mounting set-up of the cart springs at the back which did so well in the mud, worked well in the twisting country lanes too. It smoothed out the worst excesses of the road-mender's art and kept me more upright on the bends than I should reasonably have expected from a glorified brick-and-bale transporter.In conclusion, I've been so impressed by the Warrior it's now up there on my list of want-to-owns. It's the best-looking, best-handling, best-equipped mass production pickup I've yet driven and I can only hope it's a trend-setter. Engine 2477cc, 4 cylinders Power 134bhp Transmission 5-speed manual Fuel/CO2 32.8mpg / 228g/km Acceleration 0-62mph: 14.6 seconds Top speed 103mph Price £16,999 Details correct at publication date