The Mitsubishi Triton has been out for ages (also called the Mitsubishi L200 in some markets) and it represents excellent value in the segment. But, is it any good? Paul Maric reviews the 2021 Mitsubishi Triton GLS, which sits one down from the top specification model.
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More Mitsubishi content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi
More Mitsubishi Triton content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi/triton
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:48
Interior 03:21
Infotainment 04:29
Safety Tech 05:34
Practicality 06:38
On-road 10:01
Off-road 13:57
Verdict 16:50
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.
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#mitsubishi #triton #review #l200
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
More Mitsubishi content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi
More Mitsubishi Triton content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi/triton
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior 00:48
Interior 03:21
Infotainment 04:29
Safety Tech 05:34
Practicality 06:38
On-road 10:01
Off-road 13:57
Verdict 16:50
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!
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Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
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#mitsubishi #triton #review #l200
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. Guess what? This is the Mitsubishi Triton.
00:04 You guys keep asking about it and we finally found a car to review.
00:07 This is the Mitsubishi Triton GLS. It's one down from the top spec model.
00:13 It's priced at a little under $50,000 and if that's too much, the entire Triton
00:18 range kicks off at just under $25,000. This competes with things like the Ford
00:22 Ranger, the Toyota Hilux, the Isuzu D-MAX. There are stacks of competitors in this
00:28 segment in Australia and it is an incredibly competitive segment as well.
00:31 Today we're going to do a detailed review of this car. If you want to skip
00:35 ahead to other parts of the review, you can use the time codes up on the screen
00:38 or if you're on YouTube just scroll down and use the chapters below. And if you
00:41 haven't done so already, I'd love it if you could subscribe to our channel so
00:44 you can find out every single time we drive a big red car. Okay, let's talk
00:49 exterior. So you've got seven external colors to pick from. All but white, a
00:53 solid white and this red are an additional $740. There's also a pearl
00:58 white color that's slightly more expensive. Now let's talk about the design. I'm
01:02 personally a big fan of the way this looks. I think it has quite an aggressive
01:05 look. You can get a stack of accessories on the front there as well that kind of
01:08 hide the look if you're not a fan of it, but I think it's done a really good job
01:11 of differentiating this from other utes in this segment. In terms of the design
01:15 highlights, you've got that big Mitsubishi logo just here, you've got
01:18 this brushed plastic look on the front and then that 3D grille beneath it. You
01:22 can see the parking sensors tucked in the front there. Over to the side you
01:26 have LED daytime running lights, full LED headlights and whip around to the side.
01:30 Oh, by the way, you've got this chrome strip as well which is kind of common to
01:33 a lot of Mitsubishi models too. Around the side here we have 18-inch alloy
01:37 wheels on all-terrain tires. You can see the design has that brushed chrome look
01:42 on the outer edge and then a matte glossy type finish on the inside there
01:47 and then the Mitsubishi on the center cap as well. There are no big wheel
01:51 arches here, in fact Mitsubishi's been a little bit restrained in terms of the
01:55 design here, so it's kept it fairly sedate. I do like with the one step above
01:59 this the GSR, they've kind of gone to town on giving that the black highlights
02:03 and a bit more of an aggressive look, but here in the GLS it looks nice and
02:06 subdued but still looks like it's capable of going off-road and towing
02:10 things and all that kind of stuff. Over on the wing mirror it has a chrome cap on it
02:14 with the indicator built in. Side steps down here, chrome door handles, privacy
02:19 glass. Around the back here you have LED taillights, well a portion of LED
02:24 taillights, you can see at night time that has a similar design to the Pajero
02:27 Sport. DID, which is the diesel variant of this, more of that chrome strip with the
02:32 camera built in, Mitsubishi logo and then a brake light just here. Now in terms of
02:36 the actual dimensions of the tray, it has a load length of 15-20mm, a
02:40 maximum load width of 14-70mm and then a width between the wheel
02:44 arches of 10-85mm. There's also 910kg of payload, so it's a pretty
02:50 versatile space but you'll notice there aren't sort of any 12-volt outlets or
02:54 really anything special, you just have these hooks on the side. Even this tray
02:57 liner, it doesn't really look that good, it's sort of just been cut out and then
03:02 sort of whacked into the side, so not a huge fan of that. There's also no torsion
03:05 bar here, so this is actually quite heavy to lift and open. Now in terms of towing
03:09 capacity, this comes with a 3100kg brake to towing capacity with a maximum
03:15 310kg down ball weight. You can also use this as a step to
03:19 retrieve things from the tray. So we are inside the Mitsubishi Triton. We'll start
03:24 off with the key, so you have lock and unlock. On the back of it you have the
03:28 Mitsubishi logo. Now this is a proximity sensing key, so you just leave that in
03:32 your pocket. Once you're inside you have a push-button start. Now the Triton
03:36 hasn't really been updated for a little while, so this all looks fairly familiar
03:41 and even stuff like this, the dashboard and all the surrounds are very sort of
03:45 harsh plastics. I think they've kind of kept on with that initial appearance of
03:48 dual cab utes before they went out market, so has quite a durable feel to it.
03:53 And then as you move down here you can see this has the old infotainment system,
03:57 so if you've seen our Pajero Sport review you'll know that it has the new
04:00 Alliance infotainment system. I actually prefer this older one, yes it is smaller
04:04 but it has more features. Now in terms of touch points, stuff like the center
04:08 console here that is really nice and soft. This is super hard, it's just sort
04:12 of rock hard. How hard is it all? Well we've got our durometer here, we've
04:15 tested all the main surfaces on this car. If you want to see how it compares to
04:19 other cars that we've tested before, have a look at the link in the description.
04:22 Now what about build quality? It sort of moves around a little bit but for the
04:27 most part the rest of this feels pretty good. Moving on to infotainment, so I
04:31 mentioned earlier that this is an older version of Mitsubishi's infotainment
04:35 system. It's a 7-inch unit, it's a color touchscreen and then you have shortcut
04:39 buttons on either side. In terms of radio you get FM/AM/DAB+ digital radio and
04:45 then on the home screen here you can see the smartphone mirroring. We have Apple
04:48 CarPlay and Android Auto. I'll show you what Apple CarPlay looks like first. So full
04:52 screen there and then if we flick between the menus it's fairly fast. That
04:56 also interacts with the voice recognition, so it has its own inbuilt
04:59 voice recognition system but with a long hold it will then send commands to your
05:03 phone. You don't even have to have it paired to smartphone mirroring, it just
05:07 needs to be on Bluetooth, so that's a really handy feature. This is what
05:10 Android Auto looks like. So again a full screen integration and just like Apple
05:15 CarPlay it's nice and quick and easy to maneuver through the menus. In terms of
05:20 other features you have on the screen it's actually pretty straightforward. So
05:23 you have the ability to connect another USB device for audio streaming and
05:26 that's about it. You've got a HDMI port as well so if you want to watch a movie
05:30 or something like that you can just plug it up and and watch your movie on the
05:33 small screen. Okay let's talk about safety technology. Some of the key
05:37 standouts include autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection. You get
05:41 this auto dimming rear vision mirror. You also have blind spot monitoring built
05:45 into the wing mirror and a lane departure warning. Now this uses a
05:50 hydraulic steering rack which means it doesn't have a lane keeping assistant so
05:54 it is pretty primitive there in terms of that technology that keeps the car
05:58 inside the lane. Now in terms of parking you have both front and rear parking
06:01 sensors and a reverse view camera. Let's have a look at that. So you get guidelines
06:06 there. It also has rear cross-traffic alert. It is worth pointing out that
06:10 there's an optional package that's $3,000 that comes with a 360 degree
06:15 camera, leather seats and electric seats along with seat heating, but obviously
06:19 this car doesn't have that. Okay quick question for you guys. So have you owned
06:23 a Triton? What are they like in terms of long-term reliability? I think hearing
06:27 from owners is a better indication of how these things perform instead of just
06:32 trawling the internet. So let me know in the comments section below. Have you owned
06:34 a Triton? What was it like and would you buy one again? Okay moving on to
06:39 practicality and we'll start with the USB ports. So you have that HDMI port I
06:44 mentioned earlier. You have two USB charging ports plus a 12-volt outlet.
06:49 Then in terms of storage, your phone, where's it going to live? You can slide it
06:54 down the front here. There is no wireless phone charging but it can live down
06:57 there. We've also got these two cup holders where you can slide your phone
07:00 into. In terms of cup storage, this is my coffee cup so I know a lot of you who've
07:06 criticized me for the size of the coffee cup but yeah it doesn't really fit in
07:10 here and we noticed this morning on the way here that it's just really hard to
07:12 get it out. You're worried about spilling it. It's just, yeah, it's a little too
07:16 deep and you have to prop it up with a key or something like that but if you do
07:20 just have a normal water bottle it fits in perfectly fine. Now what about our big
07:24 bottle? So it doesn't fit in the center there but does it fit inside the door?
07:28 Yes it does which is good news. Center console, it's nice and deep. I'll show you
07:34 how deep that is. It basically swallows our entire bottle. We have a glove box as
07:39 well that's reasonably sized so it'll fit the entire bottle into there and
07:42 then finally you have a sunglasses holder up the top. Now what about
07:46 comfort? So you have dual zone automatic climate control. You have blower
07:50 controls for the second row. I'll show you how they work when we're back there.
07:55 Now the seats. The seats are interesting because I mentioned earlier you can get
07:59 the leather seat option. This is just the basic cloth package. Look I'm fine with
08:03 cloth seats. I just reckon these look really plain and boring. So you've just got that
08:06 standard black material up the top and then this sort of wetsuit material
08:09 beneath it. They could have been a little bit more stylish with it. It just looks
08:12 very generic and boring unless you spend that extra three grand. But the driver
08:17 and front passenger seat are fully manually adjustable. The steering wheel is
08:21 interesting because it's big and bulky. It sort of fills your entire hands and
08:24 then behind it you have those giant paddle shifters and they're metallic so
08:28 they're quite cold to the touch. In terms of the steering wheel adjustment it has
08:31 both tilt and reach adjustment and then all of your controls are actually quite
08:36 easy to reach while you're driving. Now before I hop in the back and show you
08:40 how much room there is let me let you in behind this seat so you can see a little
08:45 bit of storage. I've got a jack back here, a couple of other bits and pieces, two top
08:49 tether points. Now let's hop in. Grab handle there. Let me clean the shoes. Okay
08:55 so here we are. So look there's an okay amount of legroom. I've got my seat
09:01 pretty far back but you can see my knees are kind of just touching the back of
09:05 the seat there. Toe room is okay but not amazing and headroom is a little
09:09 compromised on the side there where I'm touching the roof. Now in terms of
09:13 storage you have a center armrest here with two cup holders. Put our bottle in there.
09:18 That fits easily. Then let's see if our big bottle fits inside the door. Yes it
09:23 does which is good news. What other features have you got back here? So you've
09:26 got map pockets in the back of the seats. You have two ISOFIX points on the two
09:30 outboard seats and this is where your vents are so they're not down here where
09:34 you would traditionally think that they are. The vents pop out of the roof.
09:37 They're controlled using these controls here and then you can switch it on and
09:41 off at the front. It is a little deceiving though because it really is
09:44 just a fan in this section that draws air in from the front and then
09:47 distributes it through here. So it's not really coming directly from the air
09:51 conditioning system. It's whatever the front of the cabin has. So it's good but
09:55 not an amazing solution. A little bit of storage down here and then finally you
09:59 have two USB ports under this little cover. Okay so we are on the road in the
10:05 Triton. Let's talk about what is under the bonnet. It is a 2.4 litre turbo
10:10 charged four-cylinder diesel engine. Makes 133 kilowatts of power and 430
10:17 newton meters of torque and that's all made into a six-speed automatic
10:20 transmission. Now what's that like? So 430 newton meters of torque is actually
10:24 one of the lowest outputs in this segment. Most of the popular dual cab
10:28 units were at around that sort of 450 plus mark. Now they're sitting at the 500
10:32 mark so it's really only the D-MAX as one of the more popular ones that's at
10:36 450 still. So this is already behind that segment. It really does need a kick in
10:40 the pants to get it up to speed with the rest of them but behind the wheel here
10:44 what you do notice is the Triton is slightly lighter than a lot of dual cabs
10:47 in this segment. So give it a little punch there. Okay it is noticeably less
10:54 torquey than its competitors but feels like it's enough, just enough. And then on
10:59 the front of the gearbox it's snappy enough so you know it'll kick back
11:04 through gears when it needs to and it's responsive enough. There just really
11:07 isn't a great deal of urgency to it once you do get stuck into the throttle.
11:11 Mitsubishi claims an official combined fuel economy of 8.6 litres per 100
11:16 kilometres. We're currently sitting on 10.8. It's a little bit higher than that
11:22 and it sits about where most other dual cabs in this segment sit in terms of
11:27 their fuel economy. Now there are no drive modes, well there are some off-road
11:31 drive modes, but this is something a little unique in this segment because
11:35 you can drive it in two-wheel drive to save fuel which is what we're doing now.
11:38 You can also switch it to four-high. Now it's not four-high with a centre
11:43 diff locked and that's a big difference compared to other utes in this segment.
11:47 You can drive this in four-high on sealed and unsealed surfaces so it will
11:51 provide its own slip to make sure you don't bind up anything and this is
11:54 fantastic if it's raining, you're towing, it just gives you that extra confidence
11:58 behind the wheel knowing that you are driving in four-wheel drive and you're
12:01 not going to break anything as well. I'll run you through the other drive modes
12:03 when we go off-road. Now we don't have an official 0 to 100 time but we thought
12:08 we'd put it up against the stopwatch to see how it goes.
12:12 [Car engine]
12:14 Now what about the ride quality? I think you may have noticed that my voice is a
12:25 little bit jittery. It's interesting, it doesn't feel all that settled without a
12:29 load in the rear so it uses leaf spring suspension, just feels a little bit
12:33 bouncy when it comes over some of these undulations on country road at country
12:37 speeds and it doesn't feel all that compliant and doesn't feel as settled as
12:42 something like a Ford Ranger does. In terms of wind noise and road noise, it is
12:46 quiet enough. The engine does sort of bring a bit of noise into the cabin
12:51 while you're moving along and there is a fair bit of wind noise as well as the
12:54 speed picks up. Righto, let's talk handling. Dial back here to third, tip it into our
12:59 corner. Actually feels pretty good. So it's soft through the corners, it
13:05 has a fair bit of body roll but it's a dual cab ute so you don't really expect too
13:09 much out of it. Now mentioned earlier it has that hydraulic steering rack so it
13:13 doesn't have a huge amount of feel through the steering wheel but it feels
13:17 fine, like it really is nothing to complain about and it's light enough
13:20 which means when it comes to parking it's not overly heavy and too cumbersome
13:24 to maneuver. Okay let's talk turning circle. 11.8 metres, it is about standard
13:30 for this segment and it's something you come to expect just given that it is a
13:34 four-wheel drive. Now the visibility front, where you sit here you actually get
13:37 a pretty commanding position over the front of the car. You can see right down
13:40 to the edges, has front and rear parking sensors so it's pretty straightforward
13:44 to park in the city. The wing mirrors are big and they have the blind spot
13:48 monitors built into them. Visibility out the rear is good as well, it's a decent
13:52 size window. So for the most part this is actually a pretty convenient place to be
13:57 seated. Okay so it's time to do a little bit of light off-roading. Now I need to
14:00 preface this by saying it has absolutely bucketed down overnight. It looks beautiful
14:06 and pleasant now but beneath that top layer it is super muddy and super slick
14:10 so our logs are going to be quite challenging today. So I'm going to try it
14:13 in 4 high to start with and then gradually work my way up if I can't get
14:17 up there. So just letting you know. Now in terms of the drive modes themselves, so I
14:21 mentioned down on the road that there's 2 high and 4 high for driving on the
14:25 road. You can also go into a 4 high mode where it locks the center diff and
14:28 then you also have a 4 low mode which uses the low range transfer case. There's
14:33 also a rear diff lock as well so it is pretty well featured. You then also have
14:37 drive modes for off-road in addition to all of those settings and that will just
14:42 tailor the traction control. And finally we have hill descent control. Now if you
14:46 want to know how all this stuff works and why it is so important to use the
14:50 right setting when you're off-road, click up here to watch our 4WD
14:53 controls explained video. Now in terms of the 4WD specs themselves, 220
14:57 millimeters of ground clearance, you have a 31 degree approach angle, that's the
15:02 angle of the face you can approach before you hit anything at the front.
15:04 23 degree departure angle, that's the same angle but in reverse. So in terms of
15:09 4WD specs that's about on par with the rest of the competitors in this
15:12 segment. So let's try our hill. I'm going to start off with the center diff locked
15:17 and we will see how we go. So you can see the indicator on the screen there tells
15:21 us when that's active. So it says it's in gravel mode. I'm going to change that to
15:24 mud and snow. I'll give this a little shot. Here we go. I'm going to have a little bit
15:29 more momentum as well because it is super greasy and slippery. I can already
15:34 feel it slipping. Go, go, go, go, go. We are almost there. Go, go, go. Yes we made it.
15:42 Alright, good, good. It was getting super sketchy up the top there but we got
15:47 there in the end and I can see as I'm driving up here we are leaving tire marks
15:51 in the ground there and the wheels are slowly filling with mud. Okay let's give
15:55 this a shot now as we come down over our rocks. Now I suspect we're going to touch
15:59 down here simply because the ground clearance here isn't absolutely massive.
16:03 220mm is about run of the mill. Let's just maneuver over this. A little crunch just here.
16:10 No, it actually cleared that. That was good. There you go. Okay that's good. That is
16:15 impressive. Drop a wheel in just here. This is feeling good so far. It's really
16:22 not throwing us around much either which is great. Get that wheel off the ground.
16:25 I'm going to pop Hill Descent Control on. So there it is. The little icons come up.
16:30 I'll let go of the brake. This is really good actually. It's descending at an
16:35 excellent rate and it's keeping everything nice and steady too. It's
16:39 actually probably one of the best examples of Hill Descent Control we've
16:43 seen, especially in this muddy condition here where it sort of it doesn't have
16:47 much traction to begin with. It's actually doing a really good job.
16:50 Okay, Mitsubishi Triton. So I'm going to be 100% honest here. It doesn't really lead
16:56 this segment in any way. The four-wheel drive system probably is one of the best
17:00 ones in the segment because you can actually drive it as a four-wheel drive
17:03 or a two-wheel drive on sealed surfaces. But in terms of technology, the drivetrain,
17:08 the towing capacity, it's always that one step behind most of the other
17:12 competitors. But where it does win is on value and in Australia this comes with a
17:16 10-year warranty. It's a bit of a no-brainer for me. If you want to save
17:19 some money and have an excellent warranty and a car that is pretty
17:23 durable as well, I think this is an excellent option. But if you're wanting
17:26 the best in the segment you're probably going to want to look elsewhere. So let
17:30 me know in the comments section below. Are you a value buyer? Do you buy this
17:34 because you want to save a bit of money or do you just go straight for the most
17:37 expensive one you can buy? I'm keen to get your thoughts in the comments section below.
17:41 Now if you did enjoy this video make sure you like it and share it with your
17:44 friends and if you haven't done so already make sure you subscribe to our
17:48 channel and press the bell icon as well. But until next time, take it easy.