Finally, a ute that carries a mountainbike
You can judge a ute by many things. I judge it by the bike-to-tray ratio, writes
Areally big mistake you can make as a car critic is to judge a vehicle solely on how it fits your own personal requirements. But please bear with me while I do just that. Because there’s something that’s always infuriated me about the new generation of ‘‘lifestyle’’ utes.
Lifestyle is a relative term, but if you’re buying a double-cab ute to serve weekends as an adventure machine, I reckon it’s a basic requirement that you should be able to put some stuff in the back of it. That’s why you buy a vehicle with a tray.
We like to mountainbike. My son and I both have 29-inch mountainbikes and they do not really fit in the tray of a regular double-cab ute. Not easily anyway.
Even with the bikes’ front wheels off, it’s a bit of a Jenga exercise to get both frames and all the gear into the tray of a double-cab Ford Ranger, Toyota Hilux or Holden Colorado.
Sure, you can put bike racks on the roof or towbar and that works great. But, ahem, you can do that with a car or SUV as well. So what was the point of the ute again?
SsangYong has launched an ‘‘XL’’ version of the Rhino ute with an extra 300 millimetre length on the tray. So it’s gone from having the shortest tray in the segment to the longest.
It’s also gone from being a goodvalue ute I very much like to a thoroughly excellent lifestyle machine in my book, because you can drop two 29in mountainbikes, wheels still attached, into the tray and drive away. That little extra length means a lot.
Well, I say ‘‘a little’’, but as you can see from the pictures, there’s a lot of metal hanging out the back. It’s a jaw-dropping look but I love it.
Popular double cab trucks like the Ranger and Toyota Hilux have tray lengths just over 1500mm. That’s pretty standard.
The Rhino XL’s extra 100mm over those mainstream machines doesn’t seem like a lot on paper and I’m willing to admit there might be other stuff going on with the available space; because getting bikes (front wheels off) in the back of a Ranger is
SsangYong Rhino SPR XL Base price: Powertrain and performance:
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