If you love the idea of a dual-cab ute but they aren't long enough, is it worth considering this? It's the 2021 SsangYong Musso XLV Ultimate. XLV stands for 300mm longer than a regular one! Paul Maric tests out the new SsangYong ute to see if it's any good.
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More SsangYong content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ssangyong
More SsangYong Musso content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ssangyong/musso-xlv
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 00:57
Interior: 03:20
Infotainment: 04:34
Safety Tech: 06:18
Practicality: 07:58
On-road: 10:33
Off-road: 15:02
Verdict: 17:22
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
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#ssangyong #musso #review
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More SsangYong content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ssangyong
More SsangYong Musso content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/ssangyong/musso-xlv
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 00:57
Interior: 03:20
Infotainment: 04:34
Safety Tech: 06:18
Practicality: 07:58
On-road: 10:33
Off-road: 15:02
Verdict: 17:22
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
Follow us on social media to see what we're up to and to ask any questions!
CarExpert:
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#ssangyong #musso #review
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So SsangYong, it's probably a brand you've never heard of, but they make an SUV and also a dual cab
00:07 ute. It is this one here. It's called the Musso, but this one's a little special. It's the long wheelbase version, the XLV.
00:14 It's about 300 millimetres longer than a regular one and it makes it longer than most other dual cab utes in this segment.
00:20 Sorry about the flies. Now it competes with things like the Mitsubishi Triton, the Isuzu D-Max and virtually every other
00:26 dual cab ute that we have in Australia. The XLV Ultimate is priced at just under
00:32 $42,000, but if that's too much you can spend a little under $34,000 for the entry level model.
00:38 Today we're going to do a review of this ute. If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review,
00:42 you can use the time codes up on the screen there, or if you're on YouTube,
00:46 just scroll down and use the chapters below.
00:48 And if you haven't done so already, make sure you subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon
00:52 so you can find out every single time we drive brands that you've never heard of.
00:57 Let's talk exterior. So you've got eight external colours to choose from. All but white is an additional
01:02 $495, which is pretty affordable. Now, what do you reckon about the design? I think it looks pretty good.
01:07 So in the black here, it really sort of, I don't know,
01:10 it looks nice and aggressive and then they've broken it up a bit with this chrome strip along the front.
01:14 You can see a camera hidden under there for the 360 camera and then like a faux carbon fibre set up down the bottom here.
01:21 I think in terms of the appearance, it actually looks quite nice and blends in nicely with the rest of the utes in this segment.
01:27 It doesn't look cheap and cheerful. Now in terms of headlights, you have Zenon headlights.
01:30 This is one of the few cars left on the market with this older headlight technology,
01:34 but it works fairly well at night time and gives you good visibility. If we skip around to the side,
01:39 let's have a look at these wheels. Okay, so 18 inch alloy wheels.
01:43 It's like a gloss black setup and a fairly high profile road-based tyre.
01:48 So it's not really an off-road focused tyre. You can tell there because of that tread pattern,
01:52 but it should do the job for some very light off-roading, which we'll do later on.
01:55 But I think the design looks good and it matches the body colour and then a little bit of plastic trim there on the wheel
02:01 arches. Now, let's have a look at this side profile.
02:03 So it's interesting because it is so long. When you look at it from the front,
02:06 it just looks like any other dual cab ute, but from side on you can really see that extra 300 mm of length
02:11 and that's going to give you extra room inside the cabin and also inside the tray because you get an additional 100 mm
02:17 of wheelbase. It's got another one of those cameras nestled under there for the 360 camera. Now come around to the rear,
02:22 it's a bit of a long walk because of the length. So around here you have
02:26 incandescent lights, nothing too special there,
02:29 no LED treatment. Four wheel drive badge, a big old Musso badge just there. Now,
02:34 unlike the shorter wheelbase versions of this, the long wheelbase comes with leaf sprung suspension instead of coil springs,
02:40 so that gives you the extra payload capacity and it's a really deep tub as well. I'll show you what I mean.
02:45 So depth comes in at 570 mm, so it is a really nice drop into there. Load length is
02:51 1600 mm, load width is 1570 mm. You have around 1100 mm between the wheel arches and then
02:57 880 kg of payload, which is pretty decent.
03:01 You have hooks on the side here plus a 12 volt outlet that has this waterproof cover on it, too.
03:07 So this is going to be pretty versatile as a work ute. There's no
03:12 torsion bar on this, so it is a little bit heavy to open and close,
03:15 but beneath here you can get three and a half tons worth of towing capacity as well.
03:20 So we are inside the SsangYong Musso. Let's have a look at the key to start with.
03:25 This is what it looks like. You've got lock, unlock, panic.
03:27 Then on the back you have the SsangYong symbol and the key flips out as well. So slightly strange because
03:33 actually, it's for the glove box, so that explains why it flips out.
03:37 Now, it's a proximity sensing key and you have a push button start just in here. Now,
03:42 what about the styling and some of the materials here? So styling wise, it doesn't look all that offensive.
03:46 Yes, there is a heap of piano black around there and also around the gear lever as well.
03:51 But for the most part, these surfaces are all sort of fairly soft.
03:54 That's a bit sort of scratchy up the top there, but there's a nice sort of padded section down here,
03:59 which looks nice and elegant. There's like this faux carbon fiber style material there. Now, what about the touch points?
04:05 Well, over here and on the door, they're nice and soft, but how soft are they? Well, we've got our durometer.
04:10 We've tested the main surfaces in this car.
04:12 If you want to see how this compares to other cars that we've tested before, scroll down and use the link in the description.
04:18 Now, what about build quality?
04:21 It all feels nice and solid.
04:23 These cars made in Korea and Hyundai, Kia, all those cars are made in Korea and generally they're pretty good.
04:30 So yeah, in terms of build quality, it is
04:33 all above board. Let's talk infotainment. So you have an 8-inch infotainment system. It's a pretty straightforward
04:40 setup. I'll run you through just the basics and it will only be quick because there's not a great deal going on here.
04:45 But this is what your home screen looks like. You have some shortcut buttons down the bottom.
04:49 Up the top there, you have radio and there's AM and FM radio. No DAB digital radio,
04:54 but you do have a six-speaker sound system. You also have the ability to select auxiliary menus. You can then go through
05:01 just like all the other Kia and Hyundai products with the battery discharge warning,
05:04 you can go through to the setup menu to change the settings.
05:08 But in terms of smartphone mirroring, you have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. I'll show you what that looks like.
05:14 This is Apple CarPlay here. Full screen integration.
05:17 It all works well. Curious thing here though is that the menu is on the left hand side.
05:22 Normally with right hand drive cars, when you hook up CarPlay, you get the menu on the right hand side,
05:27 which makes it sort of easier to use. So yeah, curious thing.
05:30 I wonder if they've told it that it's actually a right hand drive and not a left hand drive car.
05:34 Now at this point I would show you Android Auto, but doofus me forgot our Samsung at home.
05:40 So sorry about that. The other thing I wanted to show you is the screen ahead of the driver here.
05:44 So you have an LCD display in between the tachometer and the speedometer.
05:48 It's actually really interesting because it's quite a big display
05:50 and you don't see many dual cab utes in this segment with this kind of setup.
05:54 So you can flick through the menus to see your trip computer. The speedometer is interesting because you can choose different styles of speedometer.
06:00 So you can just pick between just different layouts, which I think is fascinating.
06:03 And then you have a safety menu. You can change radio stations and you also have a compass for the satellite navigation
06:09 when your phone is connected. So yeah,
06:11 it's a nice setup there and I really would love to see more of this in other dual cab utes because
06:16 I don't know, I think it just looks really nice. Okay, let's talk safety technology. So you get autonomous emergency braking.
06:22 There's an auto dimming rear vision mirror. You have a lane departure warning, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert,
06:29 and a 360 degree view camera with front and rear parking sensors. Now, let's have a look at what that looks like.
06:35 Wow, the quality of that is actually surprisingly good. So there's your 360 camera.
06:39 You can see the outlines for the parking sensors. You've got guidelines as well. Then you can select just
06:44 the view that you want. The thing that I find interesting here is that it's really low.
06:49 So you can't sort of, if you're reversing out of a space or something like that, you can't see down the road.
06:54 So this will be handy for backing in a trailer or something,
06:56 but it would have been nice to have a slightly higher field of vision there.
06:59 And by the way, you can press this button down here, which will show you the front view.
07:04 So you can clearly see out the front there and then you can also select the sides and then a wide angle version of the front.
07:10 But as you can see on the front, it's got quite a high angle there in comparison to the rear.
07:14 Now before we go on to practicality,
07:16 I just wanted to mention something that I think is of relevance and that is that SsangYong has entered bankruptcy in Korea.
07:22 And that means that, you know, they're still operating, but they're looking for a new owner and a new owner hasn't emerged.
07:28 So if you are looking at buying one of these, I think that is worth taking into account and perhaps just waiting until they
07:34 do find a new owner because you don't want to buy one and then discover that,
07:37 you know, you don't have any support. While SsangYong in Australia says it's all business as usual,
07:41 keep in mind that up the tree, they have gone bankrupt.
07:44 Now, this isn't the first time a car company has gone bankrupt. Does anyone know a car company called GM?
07:49 They filed for bankruptcy as well. So yeah, let me know in the comments section below,
07:53 will that stop you from having a look at one of these as your next dual cab ute?
07:57 I am keen to get your feedback. Now, let's move on to practicality and we'll start with connectivity. We'll get rid of this.
08:02 By the way, you need a cable for smartphone mirroring. It's not a wireless setup.
08:06 You have one USB port down the front, one auxiliary outlet and then two 12 volt outlets.
08:11 And then in terms of storage, let's have a look at our little coffee cup.
08:15 It fits okay in there, but you can see the lid catches on the edges. There are teeth though,
08:20 so that means when you put your big boy water bottle in, it will not move around too much.
08:25 You can then also store this inside the door. There's enough room there for plenty of bottle storage.
08:30 Center console is a decent size. You can see how deep that is. And then finally, let's have a look at our glove box.
08:37 Hey, that's not too bad either. Then up here, you have a sunglasses holder.
08:41 Okay, let's talk comfort now. Some exciting features here. You have not only heated seats, but cooled seats as well.
08:47 So that means on a stinker of a summer day like today, you can switch your cooled seats on.
08:51 Then on a freezing day, you can have your heated seats on plus the heated steering wheel. The seats themselves are fully manually adjustable.
08:58 But in terms of seat comfort, they're actually quite a nice seat.
09:02 They hug you in nicely. Steering wheel sits nicely in the hand and then all of these controls are easy to reach.
09:08 Okay, let's have a look at the back. Now, the interesting thing is like the door, it sticks out a whole heap there.
09:15 Yeah, it looks like they've just taken a door off an SUV and just stuck it on the back here.
09:19 Before I hop in, I'll show you what is behind here.
09:22 So when you drop that down, you can see there's a jack and a few other bits and pieces.
09:27 You've also got three top tether points. Now, this base doesn't come up, but you do have storage beneath the seat.
09:33 We've got a handy handle.
09:36 We'll hop in here.
09:38 Right, so you can see here with that extra wheelbase and the length that you're afforded,
09:42 you actually have a decent amount of leg
09:45 and knee room. So knee room is good,
09:48 toe room is okay, but not amazing and headroom is pretty generous.
09:52 It doesn't actually feel like there's that much more space in here compared to something like a Ranger.
09:57 So I think you're making up for it all in that tray area.
10:00 What about the rest of the features? So you have a center armrest here with two cup holders.
10:05 The bottle fits okay in there, but there's no teeth, so that's going to roll around a little bit.
10:09 You can put the bottle inside the door though.
10:12 You've got air vents, but no 12-volt outlet or USB charging here.
10:15 And then you also have mat pockets in the back of the seats and ISOFIX points on the two outboard seats.
10:21 Oh, by the way, instead of a lap and sash seat belt for the center occupant,
10:26 all you get is a lap belt, which I haven't really seen before in a dual cab ute. Most of them have lap and sash.
10:35 Time to go driving in the SsangYong Musso.
10:37 Now, powering this version of the Musso is a 2.2-litre turbocharged four-cylinder diesel engine.
10:44 It makes 133 kilowatts of power and 420 newton meters of torque, and that's all mated to a six-speed automatic transmission.
10:53 Now, the first thing I noticed with this engine is how quiet it is.
10:56 Even when you lean on the throttle, it stays really quiet. And then on the topic of leaning on the throttle,
11:02 it's really nice and responsive. It's got a decent amount of urge. It's always ready to get up and move. It isn't
11:07 blisteringly quick, but it doesn't feel underwhelming or underdone.
11:12 It feels like they've really focused on giving you that torque band when you need it.
11:16 And then the six-speed auto is fairly responsive as well. You don't really catch it napping.
11:20 So from that point of view, it is really decent. In terms of fuel economy, the official claim is 8.9 litres per 100km.
11:27 Let's have a look at what we're achieving.
11:30 9.2.
11:32 That's pretty impressive, I reckon. So 9.2 is less than what we've seen in a range around Hilux, and it doesn't really feel
11:38 all that different behind the wheel in terms of the pace that you get. So really reasonable fuel economy.
11:44 Okay, so you've got some drive modes to pick from. When you start the car, it goes into eco mode,
11:48 but pushing the drive mode button will send you off into power.
11:51 I can't really tell what the difference is, to be honest.
11:54 It feels about the same. And then winter, which I suspect adjusts the traction control a little bit.
12:00 So that you can get that extra traction off the line.
12:03 We don't have an official 0-100km/h time, but we've put the Musso up against the stopwatch to see how it goes.
12:08 So I mentioned earlier that the longer version of this car gets leaf springs instead of coil springs.
12:28 Coil springs are generally better for
12:30 comfort, because they are easier to control and easier to tune as well.
12:35 Whereas leaf springs are better if you need to load haul. Now when it comes to leaf springs though, when they're empty,
12:41 when you don't have a load in the tray effectively,
12:43 the leaf spring can get quite bouncy and takes a little while to settle. This on the other hand feels pretty good.
12:49 It's quite soft, so they've dialed in a lot of comfort into the ride when it is unladen.
12:54 And that sometimes means that it can linger as you hit bumps.
12:58 But for the most part that means you're going to have a really smooth ride in and around the city.
13:02 But also you're going to be able to load this up to that
13:05 900-ish kilogram payload when you do actually need to carry things. Let's talk handling and steering. How does it all feel?
13:12 I'll put our little corner coming up here.
13:14 It's actually not too bad. There's enough steering feel. It's an electrically assisted steering rack.
13:19 So you're feeling enough of what you need to feel through there. On the handling front,
13:23 I mean, it's no supercar, but in terms of a dual cab ute, it's actually pretty impressive.
13:27 It doesn't have a great deal of body roll and it is on road tyres,
13:30 which means you're going to be able to extract just a little bit more handling performance in comparison to a dual cab ute on all terrains.
13:37 Now, you'll notice as well while we're driving over some of these more corrugated stretches that my voice is
13:42 like a 13-year-old, it's sort of moving up and down. That's simply with that tune. So the leaf springs are quite soft,
13:49 but it sort of is the dampers that are firmer that it's really sort of
13:53 affecting your ability to speak probably without it sort of barking over some of these things. So it's not terrible,
13:59 it's just something you'll notice in comparison to some of the more refined dual cab utes in this segment.
14:04 Now, what about turning circle? 11.8 metres. It's actually not too bad for a dual cab ute.
14:12 So it means that, you know, if you are driving in and around the city, you're not going to get stuck doing u-turns,
14:17 especially on a long vehicle like this. That's a pretty decent turning circle. Visibility is really good.
14:24 You've got that 360 degree camera, front and rear parking sensors, decent size wing mirrors with blind spot monitoring.
14:29 So for all intents and purposes, seeing out of this is fine. You just have to keep in mind with its size,
14:35 you need to pick parks that are big enough because it's sometimes hard to find a park that you'll actually be able to squeeze this in comfortably.
14:42 Road noise. Now, this is another thing that has really impressed me here. It is super quiet inside the cabin.
14:48 I really don't hear any wind noise. I don't hear any tyre noise. The engine is quiet.
14:51 So this is going to be a decent rig if you do spend a lot of time behind the wheel,
14:56 especially if you're driving on course trip roads or on a lot of country surfaces.
14:59 You're not really going to hear all that much while you're driving.
15:02 Okay, let's do some light off-roading and we'll start with the specifications. So in terms of approach angle,
15:08 it's 25 degrees. Departure angle is 20 degrees. You have 215 millimetres of ground clearance.
15:14 Then in terms of four-wheel drive hardware, this is a full-time two-wheel drive,
15:18 but you can switch it into four-wheel drive high range. There's also four-wheel drive low range and there's an automatic
15:24 rear differential lock. So that should mean that the rear diff locks on its own as you drive up.
15:30 So I'll be keen to see how well that works. In fact, let's do a little test.
15:33 I'm going to try going up the logs in two-wheel drive first just to see if that rear diff locks and gets us up there
15:39 on its own or if it doesn't.
15:41 Now, if none of that makes any sense to you, click up here to watch our four-wheel drive controls explained video where
15:46 I run through it in a bit more detail. So let's give this a shot just in two-wheel drive.
15:51 We'll see if it does anything there.
15:54 I can feel
15:59 the rear diff lock activating, but we just don't have enough traction to get us up there.
16:04 So I'm just going to do the sensible thing and go into four-wheel drive high range
16:09 and we'll just give that one more shot. Okay, one flick of that switch,
16:12 you can see it comes up on the screen there saying four-wheel drive high. That means four-wheel drive is activated. Let's give this another crack.
16:19 There we go. That's much better. It's just walking up here. It's nice and dry today.
16:24 So it gets up here without any dramas.
16:27 The ride feels good as well. Like it's soft enough that it doesn't buck you about which is really nice.
16:31 And really you're not going to be doing any hardcore off-roading in this, but it's good to know that
16:35 it is going to keep you nice and comfortable. Okay, let's go down our rocks.
16:38 They've re-leveled a lot of this stuff and it's become a little harsher. So
16:44 I have a feeling we're going to knock a little bit here on the way down, but we'll see how we go.
16:49 And there we go, crunch just there. 215 mil of ground clearance isn't a massive amount.
16:56 I'll turn off the parking sensors. We also have a hill descent control. When I get down here a little bit,
17:01 I will activate that. So there we go.
17:04 We've got a tyre off the ground there at the back. Switch our hill descent control on. Let go of the brake.
17:10 That's not too bad. It kind of ran away at the start there and then slammed the brakes on. So
17:17 yeah, it's not totally confidence inspiring, but it's there in case you need it.
17:26 Okay, so the SsangYong Musso. What do we reckon?
17:29 Look, I think it's actually pretty good.
17:32 It's not the first thing you think of when it comes to dual cab utes, but the extra wheelbase and length
17:36 gives you a bit more space inside and also means you have a decent sized tray.
17:40 It does the towing that you'd expect it to do and it has a really nice and punchy engine. The only downside though is
17:46 what I mentioned earlier with the bankruptcy.
17:48 I don't know what's going to happen with that. By the time you watch this,
17:51 perhaps it's all been resolved and everything's fine,
17:53 but I don't know that I'd be confident buying one of these while there is that still lingering over the parent company outside of
17:59 Australia. So let me know in the comments section. Have you bought a SsangYong? What's it like?
18:03 They come with a seven-year warranty in Australia,
18:05 so it's a pretty decent coverage and a decent price as well in terms of asking.
18:09 So let me know in the comments section. Did you buy one? What's it like?
18:12 How's it all going? All that kind of stuff. Now, if you did enjoy this video,
18:15 make sure you share it and don't forget to hit the like button, and if you haven't done so already, hit subscribe as well.
18:20 But until next time, take it easy.