SHED: 2019 MITSUBISHI TRITON GLX+
THE TRITON FINDS ITS PLACE IN THE SHED DURING ITS FIRST MONTH WITH US.
THE TRITON hasn’t left town for its first month with us, but it hasn’t been laying idle either. As always when you have a ute, especially one with a towbar, mates appear from everywhere wanting to borrow it. This time it was Louis from MOTOR Magazine who was looking to tow his go-kart trailer over a weekend and the ZL1 Camaro he regularly drives strangely enough doesn’t have a hitch. I happily swapped keys with him and, as expected, the Triton made light work of the relatively light kart trailer. For the record; the ZL1 attracts a bit more attention than the Triton does. It goes a bit better, too, but it can’t tow a trailer or go off-road.
The MOTOR team nabbed the Triton again for use as a camera car on a shoot with the Camaro at the racetrack, and it gave us the chance to bag these pics.
Back in Melbourne, the Triton has slipped into commuter mode and is a very easy vehicle to live with for this use. It really is an appliance that you just use and it does the job without fault. It’s an easy vehicle to get in and out of, offers plenty of outward vision for the driver and is reasonably comfortable.
The Triton is one of the few 4x4 utes on the market that has a steering column that is adjustable for both height and reach, yet with my 185cm frame in the driver’s seat
I still find the steering wheel a long way away and would prefer it closer. It is less than ideal, but moving the seat further forward would have my knees touching the steering wheel.
Speaking of moving the seat forward, the only problem we’ve had with the Triton came when Tristan Tancredi drove it and was unable to slide the seat forward any more than a few centimetres. There was obviously something jamming the left-hand seat slide, but looking under it didn’t show anything. Removing the seat revealed a five-cent piece that had well and truly wedged itself into the rail preventing full travel. The offending bent and buckled coin
was removed to make things right.
While most of the cabin controls and functions within the Triton are simple and easy to operate, a personal hate of mine is the absence of dials to control things like the audio volume and cabin temperature. Car companies seem hell-bent on doing away with dials and replacing them with buttons even though dials are more tactile, easier to use without having to look at, and faster responding to inputs. In this age when safety experts are always preaching about driver distractions, you’d think having the simplest controls for regular function would be a no-brainer. Mitsubishi isn’t the only company at fault here, most of them are guilty of disregarding knobs.
The cabin is otherwise well-appointed with all the stuff you want; single-zone climate control, a decent-sized display screen with access to Apple Carplay/ Android Auto, and good storage compartments. Just as important, it doesn’t have the stuff you don’t want; there’s no keyless entry or start button, and no power tailgate at the back. Even so, it’s still frustrates when it doesn’t let you remove the key from the ignition before you put it in park, and the self-locking doors function can’t be switched off.
The Triton has proved itself easy to live with in town, so now we just have to get it out and get it dirty.