What do you do when you’ve outgrown then family estate car but you can’t quite stretch to something big and practical like the Landrover Discovery? Get a pickup truck!
While most families will assume these machines are just for ‘workies’ and aren’t an alternative to a family car, we decided to test out this theory with the series 5 Mitsubishi L200 Barbarian.
The first thing that you notice when approaching the L200, especially when you’re in a small underground carpark, is how big it is. AT 5.2m in length it’s 40cm longer than the aforementioned Discovery. With its nose poking out the front of the parking space you can see that this latest version of the L200 has a distinctive and modern look. It’s no beauty queen, the VW Amarok and Ford Ranger have it beaten in this department, but it’s a big improvement on the old model and looks fresh.
Step up and inside the cab and everything looks good – very car like. The seats are comfy, the dash is well laid out and the stereo/satnav is easy to use. It’s not gadget laden but there’s heated seats and a simple dial to activate the four wheel drive.
Having never actually driven a pickup before it was great fun to hustle it around the city centre while looking out over most of the traffic. The ride height without luggage and passengers is silly high but you quickly get used to this and learn to enjoy it. As expected, the gear change is more commercial vehicle than family car and the suspension is setup for load lugging rather than taking tight bends, but again you learn to work with it.
Getting back to using the L200 as a family car, we took our 8 month old son out in it with his baby seat strapped into the back. Considering the overall length of the vehicle, once the car seat was in the back the front passenger seat had to be kept quite far forward to for it to fit. This wasn’t a problem for us but if passengers were six foot plus then it would be a really tight squeeze.
Where the L200 really stands out of course is it’s lugging ability. Being able to take 1045kg means that it made light work of a gatepost that we had taken down and needed hauling to the local recycling centre. While loading it wasn’t easy due to the hinged cover over the load bay, once full it made you realise just how much the L200 bounces down the road around when empty.
One problem with using the L200 as a family car is that the load bay isn’t something you can just drop a couple of shopping bags into. If you owned one of these then you really need to customise the space a bit so that your eggs aren’t scrambled by the time you get home.
Overall then the L200 is still a truck that will mainly be used for lugging tools onto building sites. However, for active families that carry around a lot of sports equipment and maybe want to tow horses or boats, the L200 really can’t be beat on value with the top of the line Barbarian coming in at £23,799. Try finding a Discovery for that price or an estate car that can tow 3,100Kg.
CAR: Mitsubishi L200 DI-D Barbarian
PRICE: £23,799 (Lease a Mitsubishi L200)
ENGINE: 2,442cc 4 cylinder DOHC common rail with intercooler and turbocharger
POWER: 178 bhp
TORQUE: 430 Nm
MAX SPEED: 111 mph. 0-62mph 10.4secs
ECONOMY: 42.8 mpg
CO2: 173 g/km
TT Rating: 
