SHOGUN SHELL
The Mitsubishi Shogun Sport is a versatile seven-seater SUV that feels like it will last forever – but, asks Sean O’Grady, could you put up with such a basic model for that long?
When first I met the new Mitsubishi Shogun Sport I was immediately struck by its very high stance and ground clearance. From its general demeanour it crossed my mind that they had merely put some fancy bodywork on their L200 pickup and called it macaroni, as the song goes. Guess what?
That’s precisely what they’ve done. Macaroni, by the way, is right, in fact, as, apart from pasta, the term refers, or rather referred, to an outlandish wig of a type popular in some circles in the 18th century. In the language of the time such a hairpiece “exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion”.
So it does too. The styling of the Shogun Sport is an even more extreme version of Mitsubishi Motors’
extreme leitmotifs, such as the “face” that looks like the filmic Predator and a great big gouge across the rear wings that makes it look like you’ve had a scrape in the car park. Even its own mum would find it difficult to call it attractive. That, though, is not what it’s there for. It is there to be a posh pickup, with all-terrain ability, seven seats and a 3-tonne towing capacity. It’s got switchable four-wheel drive, which means you can use it as a reardrive road car as well as off-road, and there’s a simple dial for you to select whatever combination you need, say if you’re going over icy mountains or a muddy creek.
Mitsubishi rightly have a strong reputation of building rugged transport for farmers, and this is a typical example. It feels like it will last forever. Naturally, there’s a torquey diesel engine, of no great sophistication. The four-cylinder 2.4-litre unit is noisy and the bluff front adds some wind noise to the symphony, the price you pay for the vehicle’s versatility, I guess.
At £40,000 for the top versions you need to be aware that it doesn’t really offer you much more than the four-door version of their L200 pickup, and if you’re not set on having a seven-seater then that’s probably a better bet.
Apart from value – and I admit this is a niche vehicle that can save your life in difficult conditions – there are a couple of other things that let the Mitsubishi down. Most disappointing is the lack of inbuilt satnav, presumably because it is brought into the UK by a private importer rather than configured by Mitsubishi Motors itself for the British market.
Anyway, there isn’t one, which is highly unusual nowadays. It’s relatively easy to plug your smartphone into the car’s brain and use an app for navigation, but some people will no doubt be a little put off by the hassle.
More trivial is the name: Shogun Sport. Because try as I might, I couldn’t really see very much at all that was sporty about this capable but basic machine. It carries over the “ladder frame” chassis from its pickup origins, which is excellent for strength and longevity, but not exactly an ideal starting point for anything that purports to be a performance machine.
I don’t think they mean for us to take the badging that literally, and I suppose they just saw Range Rover adding a “Range Rover Sport” to their model lineup and thought they’d do the same, because it’s trendy. There you go again, then; exceeding the usual bounds of fashion.