CarExpert
  • last year
It's time for a GRUELLING towing test of EVERY 4WD SUV on sale in Australia. Each SUV goes up against our state-of-the-art trailer dynamometer and then tackles our steep hill road with a 2800kg trailer attached. SOME fail our tests. Join Paul Maric on this towing test epic!

4WD SUV off-road test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Rn0CyHh2g
MEGA 4WD SUV drag race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugmmUpfdGNA

Full results: https://www.carexpert.com.au/car-comparisons/best-4wd-suv-towing-test-some-fail-our-challenges-mu-x-vs-landcruiser-vs-patrol-vs-defender-vs-everest-vs-lx600-vs-fortuner-vs-pajero-sport-vs-prado-vs-grand-cherokee-l-vs-rexton

Our competitors include:
- 2023 Ford Everest V6
- 2023 Ford Everest four-cylinder
- 2023 Lexus LX600
- 2023 Toyota LandCruiser 300 Series Sahara
- 2023 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport
- 2023 Toyota LandCruiser Prado Kakadu
- 2023 Toyota Fortuner Crusade
- 2023 Isuzu MU-X LS-T
- 2023 Jeep Grand Cherokee L Summit Reserve
- 2023 Nissan Patrol Ti-L
- 2023 SsangYong Rexton
- 2023 Land Rover Defender 110 diesel

Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Test explainer + Toyota LandCruiser 300 00:49
SsangYong Rexton 11:20
Ford Everest V6 20:36
Mitsubishi Pajero Sport 28:10
Toyota Fortuner 35:32
Isuzu MU-X 42:11
Ford Everest 4-cyl 49:14
Toyota LandCruiser Prado 55:59
Jeep Grand Cherokee L 1:03:00
Lexus LX600 1:09:56
Land Rover Defender 1:18:11
Nissan Patrol 1:25:20
Summary and WINNERS 1:31:47

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:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CarExpertAus
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/CarExpertAus
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carexpert.com.au

Paul Maric:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PaulMaric
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/PaulMaric
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/PaulMaric

#towing #comparison #suv
Transcript
00:00:00 G'day I'm Paul, welcome to Australia's most comprehensive four-wheel drive SUV comparison.
00:00:06 We've done some drag racing, we've got some off-roading coming up, but today is all about
00:00:10 towing and putting Australia's best-selling four-wheel drive SUVs through their paces,
00:00:15 up against our trailer dine and also our big trailer as well. Cars that are missing, so
00:00:19 LDV D90, it's not here, they didn't want to be part of this test, so it's not here. And then
00:00:24 we're missing some Land Rovers as well, so the new Range Rover, same story with the Discovery,
00:00:28 wasn't available, so they are the vehicles that are missing, but we have everything else in this
00:00:32 segment. If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this comparison, you can use the time
00:00:36 codes on the screen, or if you are on YouTube, you can scroll down and use the chapters below,
00:00:40 and make sure you subscribe to the channel and hit the bell icon as well, because that's going
00:00:44 to tell you every single time each element of this four-wheel drive test goes live.
00:00:47 Okay, so we have arrived at the start line. Before we kick off with the Land Cruiser,
00:00:53 I just want to run you through what we're actually doing here with this towing test,
00:00:57 and why this is going to be the ultimate test of how these vehicles actually perform
00:01:01 when they are towing. So, to get our baseline, what we're going to do is run the vehicles without
00:01:06 the trailer attached, and we're going to get some performance figures. So, that'll be 0 to 100,
00:01:10 that'll also include 80 to 120, and a quarter mile time as well. We're then going to do two
00:01:15 laps of the bowl to get our fuel economy figure at 100 kilometres an hour, and finally, we're
00:01:20 going to do a break from 100 k's an hour to zero to see how long these vehicles take to stop from
00:01:25 100 k's an hour, so you can get an accurate comparison between them. Then is going to come
00:01:30 the tough test before we actually head over to the hill road, and that's hooking up what's called a
00:01:34 trailer dyno. Now, the trailer dyno is designed to make this engine work, and the way that it
00:01:40 works is we actually have a computer here that allows us to set a load from 0 to 10 kN, and we're
00:01:45 going to pick a load of 3 kN, so it matches the ute test that we did recently. What exactly is a
00:01:51 trailer dyno, and what is it designed to do? Well, it's designed to apply a constant load to the
00:01:55 engine, and it's meant to simulate a big trailer going up a steep hill, and the whole idea there
00:02:00 is that we can have consistency with each of the vehicles, and it means that we can get some
00:02:04 accurate data that represents how each of these vehicles tows. Now, what does 3 kN actually mean
00:02:10 in the real world? Well, it is quite hard to explain, because at 3 kN, it could mean a 3.5
00:02:14 tonne trailer going up a 20% grade, or it could be a 2 tonne trailer going up a 40% grade. It
00:02:20 really is hard to relate those, because the load really depends on what the vehicle is doing,
00:02:24 the grade that it's going on, and how heavy the trailer is, but the whole point is that 3 kN is
00:02:29 a consistent number across all the vehicles, and it allows us to compare them directly.
00:02:32 We're going to start off with the Land Cruiser first. I've got my spec sheet here.
00:02:35 So, 3.3 litre, twin turbocharged V6 diesel, 227 kW of power, importantly 700 Nm of torque,
00:02:44 it has a claimed fuel economy of under 9 litres per 100 km. This is a full-time four-wheel drive,
00:02:50 and we're going to run this in sport mode for our unladen test to see how it all goes. So,
00:02:55 let's saddle up and give it a crack.
00:03:07 Alrighty, there's 100.
00:03:12 Alrighty, and there's our quarter mile. So, we'll set our cruise now at 100 for our fuel economy
00:03:22 run. Okay, so let's run through our numbers here. So, 0 to 100 took 8.11 seconds, which is actually
00:03:29 not too bad. 80 to 120 took 5.53 seconds, which again isn't too bad. That's the number that's
00:03:36 going to indicate how long it takes you to overtake other vehicles. Quarter mile was 15.85
00:03:42 seconds at a terminal velocity of 143 km/h. And finally, our break from 100 km/h, 3.35 seconds
00:03:53 and 42.84 metres, which isn't too bad when you consider the size of this vehicle.
00:03:58 Okay, now it's time to hook up our trailer dine and see how this performs with the load on the back.
00:04:05 Oh, and by the way, I've got James in the car here with me. He's one of our competition winners.
00:04:10 He's going to be doing all of our data logging and stuff like that. So, don't get too alarmed
00:04:13 if you see an alarm pop in every now and then. What we're going to do with our computer here,
00:04:18 we're going to set the load to 3 kN and it's going to be set to an auto load, which means that it
00:04:22 releases the resistance as we move through the gears. That means that the vehicle actually has
00:04:27 a chance to accelerate. We're going to go all the way through to 100 km/h so we can get a 0 to 100
00:04:32 time. Some of these vehicles won't be able to achieve 100 km/h, so for those we're also going
00:04:37 to log 0 to 90 as well, just so we have all of those figures. And finally, we're going to do
00:04:42 two laps of the bowl with cruise control set at 100 km/h to compare fuel economy unladen to laden,
00:04:47 so we can have a look at the delta between the two. So, let's give this a shot. James,
00:04:50 if you want to set our load, auto load, to 3 kN, please. Set this over to sport mode so we can get
00:04:56 the best acceleration run. Let's give this a crack. Still feels really nice and strong, even
00:05:05 with the load on it. 60, 80, it is slowing down a little bit now. Here comes 100.
00:05:12 All right, we've just broken through 100 there, so what I'll do now is set the cruise control
00:05:19 and we'll reset our fuel economy as well and we will do two laps of our bowl.
00:05:25 Okay, so fuel economy on the unladen run was 9 litres per 100 km, with the trailer dyne set
00:05:30 to 3 kN, it went up to 31.4 litres per 100 km, so on the screen there you'll be able to see
00:05:36 the comparison between those two. 0 to 100, almost double to 14.13 seconds, so it gives you an idea
00:05:44 of how much harder this engine is having to work when you do have a trailer on there.
00:05:47 Mind you, when we were doing our two laps with cruise control set there, it was powering along
00:05:52 really nicely, so there were no dramas there, engine temps didn't pick up, it was just really
00:05:57 just humming along nicely. So yeah, look, land cruiser, I was kind of expecting this to just do
00:06:02 what it needs to do, especially when it comes to towing, and I don't think it really was going to
00:06:06 disappoint at all. Okay, so it's time to do the next part of our towing test, and that involves
00:06:14 some real-world testing on our hill road. It's about five kilometres and it's quite a challenging
00:06:20 course because it simulates country Australia, and then we get to a point where we have a 15%
00:06:24 climb, and that is a really steep climb for something that has a trailer on the back.
00:06:28 We've weighed the trailer up to exactly 2,800 kilos with 280 kilos on the down ball. The reason
00:06:34 we chose that number is we went with the lowest maximum capacity, which is the Jeep Grand Cherokee
00:06:40 at 2,800 and some kilograms, so that's why we're going to use this trailer across all of them.
00:06:44 What we're doing here as well is we're measuring sag height, so we get a better idea of how
00:06:48 much the rear sags, and our hill road is going to cover everything from these gradual climbs
00:06:53 through to our steepest ascent at 15%. We've got a faster section up the top and then a gradual
00:06:59 descent as well where I'll do a little bit of engine braking, and finally we have a choppy
00:07:03 section right at the end to see how well the suspension handles some of those bumps at around
00:07:07 60 kilometres an hour. So I'm excited for this, and we're also going to cover rear camera as well
00:07:13 to see how well that performs. So let's kick off in the Land Cruiser. Okay, everything is good to go.
00:07:20 Now, camera quality is great in the Land Cruiser, but like some of the other vehicles in this test,
00:07:26 the camera itself isn't centred, and it means that when you are reversing it into position,
00:07:31 it is tricky to see it. The other issue we found as well is that when I was reversing
00:07:35 to connect up the trailer to start with, it actually hit the emergency brake because it
00:07:40 thought we were going to hit something. So it doesn't really have the smarts here to detect
00:07:45 when you do have a trailer on board to stop some of those systems interfering. Okay, so straight off
00:07:50 the bat here, this feels really nice and confident. You know, the old Land Cruiser was available in a
00:07:57 petrol V8 and also a diesel V8, and I just found that that was quite a confidence-inspiring
00:08:05 experience behind the wheel, and this is no different. Even though they've gone to a V6
00:08:09 with a 10 speed, it's actually managing really nicely here at the moment without any dramas.
00:08:14 There is no towing mode as far as I can tell, so we're just going to keep it in this mode,
00:08:18 and you do have to get an aftermarket brake controller. So some of the vehicles here have
00:08:22 integrated brake controllers, but this one is an aftermarket setup. That's interesting. So I am
00:08:27 seeing now a little bit of engine braking there. As I'm coming down this descent into our hairpin,
00:08:31 it is actually kicking back through the gears on its own and giving us a little bit of relief from
00:08:38 having to just ride the brakes on the way down. So there is something going on there. It has
00:08:41 detected there is a trailer of some sort, which is good. Here comes our hairpin, and then we have
00:08:46 a climb out of the hairpin as well, so we'll see how it performs once we step on the gas out of
00:08:51 here. This is a bit choppy through here as well, so it's a good chance to test that ride quality.
00:08:59 I'll give that a little kick. That's flat to the board now,
00:09:05 and it's actually pretty good, so that's not too bad at all.
00:09:08 Okay, here comes our climb. Let's see how the Cruiser performs with our big ascent here.
00:09:15 All right, so 15 percent grade. Line it up, get on the throttle. I'm flat to the board now.
00:09:24 It's actually doing a good job. Speed is gradually increasing there.
00:09:32 It doesn't feel like it's tapering off at all. I think even if I was to roll out of the throttle,
00:09:35 it still feels perfectly fine. So very happy with that. Good job on our ascent.
00:09:41 Okay, and this is our fastest stretch along the back. I'm going to target 80 k's an hour along
00:09:46 here just so we can get a bit of a feel for what it's like with a bit of speed. It is a
00:09:51 little choppy here as well. Yeah, look, it actually feels really nice along here. It is
00:09:54 a little bit bouncy, and I'll be keen to see when we get to the bottom of the hill how that actually
00:09:58 feels once we get to the much bouncier section, but so far so good.
00:10:03 Okay, time for our long descent here. This is the sort of second last part of
00:10:08 our test circuit. What I want to do here is basically start doing some engine braking to
00:10:13 see how this feels. I'm going to grab fourth there. We'll see if it can hold around 60 to 70 k's an
00:10:19 hour. There in fourth, it's doing a good job. There are no paddle shifters, and I'll try not
00:10:26 to mention this, why this is a bad thing in each of these cars, but ultimately a paddle shifter
00:10:32 allows you to just quickly row through the gears and get the engine braking you need without having
00:10:35 to faff about with this. So, you know, this is an okay system, but I would prefer to just have
00:10:40 some paddle shifters to take care of it all. Okay, this is our choppy section. We're doing
00:10:45 this at 60 k's an hour to see what it feels like as we hit some of these undulations.
00:10:51 Gee, it is super floaty here. Yeah, it's quite a soft ride and it bounces around a fair bit,
00:10:58 but it still kind of feels okay. It's not the end of the world, but you do
00:11:04 notice it sort of bouncing around a little bit there. So, there it is. LandCruiser did a nice
00:11:10 job on the hill road there. No nasty surprises. I'm quite happy with how that performed and
00:11:15 kind of is what you'd expect from a LandCruiser. It is built to do this sort of stuff day in,
00:11:20 day out. Alrighty, so it is time for the SsangYong Rexxon. I'll run you through the specs
00:11:25 here. So, 2.2 litre, four cylinder, turbocharged diesel, eight speed auto, 148 kilowatts of power,
00:11:32 441 newton metres of torque. So, really not a great slab there. We think this is around 10,
00:11:39 just over 10 seconds, zero to 100, and a claimed fuel economy of just under 9 litres per 100 k's.
00:11:45 Okay, so I'll pop it into power mode, so that appears down there on the cluster.
00:11:49 Dial up some revs. This is also a two wheel drive with four high for unsealed surfaces.
00:11:54 So, we're just going to leave it in two high and away we go.
00:11:57 It's actually pretty quiet in here. It's quite surprising. So, there's
00:12:06 90 k's an hour. It sort of gets along okay. It doesn't make a huge racket about it either.
00:12:10 Okay, and here is our quarter mile marker.
00:12:17 Excellent. All right, we will set cruise control. So, we are looking at zero to 100 in just over 11
00:12:24 seconds, which is actually not too bad. 80 to 120, 8.55. So, not amazing, but not the end of
00:12:31 the world. Quarter miles, 17.78 seconds at terminal velocity of 126 k's an hour. So,
00:12:37 not overly quick. And then our stopping distance. Wow, I think this is the best so far, actually. So,
00:12:42 3.3 seconds and 41.56 metres. So, that is a pretty impressive stopping time there. So,
00:12:49 let's rig the trailer up and see how we go. Okay, so trailer time in the SsangYong.
00:12:55 I'll just call out this has the aftermarket Ironman suspension set up. So, it's the Nitro
00:13:02 gas suspension front and rear. So, it springs and dampers, and it's basically a heavy duty
00:13:07 suspension kit that raises the ride by 40 mm. And you kind of feel it when you're stepping inside.
00:13:11 You feel like you have to step up a little bit to get in there. So, there is definitely a difference
00:13:15 there. I'll be keen to see when we go on the hill road how it actually performs with a bit of bumps
00:13:20 and stuff like that. So, all right, here we go. See if we can accelerate up to 100 with our trailer
00:13:25 on board. All right. Oh, it feels very leisurely. That is pinned to the board. Okay, there's 70
00:13:38 k's an hour. 80, 90. Let's see if we can actually crack 100 here. 93, 97, 98. No, it's not going to
00:13:57 make 100. All right, I'm going to roll out of that and set cruise control and reset load. Perfect.
00:14:04 Okay, so we've just reset the load, and this is now doing the exact same thing
00:14:07 the Musso did. So, watch the speedo there. It's not dropping down another gear here
00:14:13 until, what, 70 k's an hour, and now it's finally firing back up. But by this point,
00:14:20 you've already started slowing down enough that you're annoying other traffic. So,
00:14:23 I think they really need to work on the cruise control function here and just making sure that
00:14:27 it is willing to drop down earlier so that you aren't just holding up traffic when it decides
00:14:32 what to do. So, it's accelerating back up to 100 now.
00:14:37 So, there we go. It's hit the target. It's gone up a gear, and I'll be curious to see what it
00:14:45 does here, whether it starts slowing down again. No, there we go. It's holding that.
00:14:49 It's gradually slowing down, actually, so you can see that. So, yeah, look, that's something
00:14:53 they definitely need to work on there because that is going to get annoying after a while.
00:14:57 Okay, so here we go again. So, it's slowing down once more once it hit that 100 target.
00:15:02 It's slowing down. It's now doing 87, and it's gradually getting slower and slower. So,
00:15:08 that is a pretty frustrating thing, I reckon.
00:15:11 All right, all done with the SsangYong now. That was pretty frustrating. So,
00:15:14 that cruise control thing they really need to sort out because that would get annoying after
00:15:19 a while if you are actually towing. Just to recap the numbers, so 11 seconds, zero to 100,
00:15:24 which is not terrible, but with the trailer on it was 19 seconds to 90. Couldn't actually make it
00:15:31 to 100 there at all. Fuel economy went from 8 litres per 100 to 25, but I would totally disregard
00:15:37 that 25 figure because half the time it was doing like 80 kilometres an hour because the cruise
00:15:41 control wouldn't actually hold speed. So, yeah, I'm hoping that's something they can sort out
00:15:45 with a software update or something because at the end of the day, the ride actually felt
00:15:49 nice and everything sort of was okay, but it was just the cruise control that really
00:15:53 let everything down. Okay, time for some Rexton action.
00:15:58 This is a really interesting one because it's not top of mind when people are shopping for an
00:16:03 SUV in this segment, but really good camera there and this one has the optional Ironman Nitro gas
00:16:10 suspension. So, it means it lifts off the ground and it kind of just gives you a slightly sort of
00:16:16 better appearance. I did notice once we got the trailer on though that it does sag quite a bit at
00:16:21 the back there, but it is what it is. 441 Newton metres of torque, so it is a little down compared
00:16:28 to the rest of the pack. It also doesn't have a full-time four-wheel drive system, so I had to
00:16:32 leave it there in two-wheel drive high range because we are on a sealed surface. What I'll
00:16:38 also do is just put the drive mode into power mode just so we have a little bit more throttle
00:16:42 response. Wow, it really do feel it is lacking there. I've got a pin to the board and we're
00:16:49 barely moving. This is on the back section with our slight incline, so yeah, I'm going to think
00:16:56 this is probably going to struggle a bit on that grade, but so far the rest of it actually feels
00:17:01 really nice. Okay, hairpin is coming up and then we've got to climb out of the hairpin.
00:17:05 Ride is feeling great so far. Steering's nice and light too, so getting around with the trailer on
00:17:11 is really good. Okay, here comes the climb. It is really labouring there to get us moving. We
00:17:22 are well short of the maximum towing capacity as well, so you just do wonder how you would actually
00:17:28 go towing a bigger load with this because it would feel pretty underdone closer to the limit.
00:17:35 Okay, steep climb is coming up. Let's see how it goes. We'll line it up and I'll
00:17:40 pin it to the board and we'll see what happens.
00:17:44 Here we go. Pin to the board.
00:17:49 Very slowly gaining speed. It's like 40 kilometers an hour.
00:17:57 42. Yeah, he's really, really working for this. Almost at the top of the hill. Here it comes.
00:18:10 All right, finally I can pick up the speed a bit for this back section and see what the ride's like
00:18:16 with this Ironman suspension setup. It's really, it just is really nicely settled. So, you know,
00:18:23 I think yes, it is a little more expensive to get that suspension kit, but like we've said with a
00:18:28 number of these vehicles in the past, it is something you probably want to be doing because
00:18:32 the stock tune, I don't know, when you look at some of these Korean cars, they are very softly
00:18:37 tuned and they just don't feel like they're built for towing in Australian conditions.
00:18:42 And this aftermarket setup they have here feels much more confident with this load on it. It's
00:18:46 not perfect, but it's definitely not moving around anywhere near as much as some of the
00:18:50 more softly tuned SUVs in this segment. There you go. There's one of the downsides to this
00:18:58 two-wheel drive setup. I just got onto the throttle there out of that turn and spun up that
00:19:02 wheel, killed torque briefly. So, yeah. Okay. So let's try a bit of engine braking. I actually
00:19:08 have paddle shifters, which is good. So there's third gear there. We'll see if it slows us up.
00:19:13 Let's do 78. A little quick for my liking. Slow it up a touch and see if I can drop it back into
00:19:21 second. It's not letting me have second. Even at 63 k's an hour. Okay, finally got second gear
00:19:29 there. It feels much better there in second gear in terms of engine braking.
00:19:33 Yeah, look, it's not too bad there, but I think the gear ratio is just slightly off. I mean,
00:19:42 third, it's sort of still pulling away a little bit. In second, you've got to slow it right down
00:19:46 for. Right, here is our bumpy section. It does feel pretty busy along here. It is sending a lot
00:19:54 more vibration through the cabin than the other vehicles have been doing, but it is staying nice
00:19:59 and level. It's not sort of corpusing and being funny like a F1 car does at speed. So that is
00:20:05 doing an okay job there. Yeah. Okay. Look, so SsangYong Rexton, it's interesting. The rest of
00:20:13 this car just feels really nice and I just think it's let down by the engine and the sort of
00:20:18 calibration here of the transmission, plus the two-wheel drive high range. My wishlist for the
00:20:22 next generation of this car would be a punchier engine, maybe with 500 newtons, and then the
00:20:27 ability to put this into a four-wheel drive mode without being on an unsealed surface,
00:20:31 because outside of that, I think they've actually done a pretty good job with the rest of the
00:20:34 package. Okay, time for Ford Everest. So we have two Ford Everest in this test. One is the V6,
00:20:43 one is the four-cylinder, this one here is the V6. So three-litre turbocharged V6 diesel,
00:20:48 184 kilowatts of power, 600 newton metres of torque. It's all mated to a 10-speed automatic
00:20:54 transmission. So around nine seconds, 0 to 100, and fuel economy of under nine litres per 100km.
00:21:01 This is one of the vehicles in this test that can actually run in two-wheel drive high range,
00:21:05 four-wheel drive automatic, and then four-wheel drive high range and low range as well.
00:21:10 For vehicles that have the ability to run in four-wheel drive and two-wheel drive on sealed
00:21:14 surfaces, we're just going to leave them in four-wheel drive so we can get those optimum
00:21:18 numbers. So James, here is your sheet of paper. Let's give this a crack. I think we're all ready
00:21:24 to go. Alrighty, we'll dial up some revs and we'll go through to the quarter mile.
00:21:28 Feels nice off the line, not as sprightly as the Land Cruiser, but it's moving anyway. 80, 90,
00:21:39 100. And coming up to our quarter mile marker.
00:21:45 There it is there. Beautiful. All right, we'll get cruise control set at 100km/h and do two
00:21:51 laps of the bowl. We had 0 to 100 in 9.39 seconds, so okay, but really not that amazing. 80 to 120
00:22:00 in seven seconds, again okay but not amazing. That seven seconds is how long it takes to
00:22:04 overtake other vehicles. You can see there compared to the V6 diesel and the Land Cruiser,
00:22:09 there is a sizable chunk of time between those two. Quarter mile took 16.8 seconds at a terminal
00:22:16 velocity of 134km/h and finally our break from 100km/h, 3.16 seconds at 44.74 metres. So
00:22:25 not a bad stopping time but still not as good as the Land Cruiser there when push comes to shove.
00:22:30 So let's get the trailer dyne hooked up and give this engine a bit of load.
00:22:34 Okay, so we are at the start line now with Everest V6 diesel with our trailer dyne attached.
00:22:41 James is going to get our load set. We'll switch stop start off and then we'll punch it through to
00:22:46 100. All right, load is set. Here we go. We'll see if we can actually hit 100.
00:22:53 All right, yeah this is just in terms of a comparison there to the Land Cruiser, it does
00:23:00 feel a little more sluggish but it's actually okay once it gets up to speed. So here comes 100km/h.
00:23:06 So there's 100 there. All right, we'll set cruise control and do some fuel economy logging.
00:23:15 We had our unladen 0-100km/h was 9.39 seconds with the trailer, 17 seconds, so almost double
00:23:23 the time there again. And then fuel economy went from 9 litres per 100km to 32.2. So it actually
00:23:30 did chew through a bit of fuel there but it actually felt nice and confident. I thought it
00:23:34 was going to be much slower when we had the dyne attached but it was sort of doing a good enough
00:23:38 job there without too many dramas. So yeah, look, good job there by the Everest and feels pretty
00:23:44 confidence-inspiring with the trailer on the back. I'm going to call out just a couple of cool things
00:23:47 here when it comes to connecting the trailer initially and that is all of your assistance
00:23:52 systems here with the towing menu. So one of the cool things with Everest is you can set the trailer
00:23:58 length and the settings of the trailer so that it integrates within the blind spot. And the way that
00:24:03 works is if a vehicle enters the trailer's blind spot it'll alert you here on your blind spot
00:24:08 monitor on the mirror, which is something you don't really find in vehicles normally. Also has
00:24:13 an integrated brake controller so it means that you can set brake gain and all that sort of stuff
00:24:17 without having to go and buy an additional brake controller for the vehicle. So it's a pretty sort
00:24:22 of decent setup and I'm happy with how that works. Probably the last thing that I love is the
00:24:29 connection checklist. So if you are sort of new to towing, the connection checklist runs you through
00:24:33 all the stuff you need to do. Plus also allows you to run a light test so you can just hit go,
00:24:38 it'll then check all the lights on the vehicle. You can hop out and have a look at it, you can
00:24:41 even do it through the phone app as well which I think is good. Finally on the camera quality,
00:24:46 it's excellent so really easy to see what's going on and everything lines up centrally.
00:24:51 Now how does it all feel behind the wheel here? Well look there are V6 diesels and there are V6
00:24:57 diesels. The one in the Land Cruiser is quite sort of punchy and that's just telling us that
00:25:02 the trailer is attached, that blind spot is deactivated because I haven't set any of that
00:25:07 stuff up. So yeah it doesn't feel as punchy as the V6 diesel in the Land Cruiser but it is
00:25:14 sort of an engine that doesn't have as big of an output. But ultimately it actually doesn't
00:25:19 feel too bad behind the wheel. I'm sort of at three quarters throttle there and it's sort of
00:25:23 pulling along nicely. I can actually put this into tow mode as well which I'll move into now.
00:25:29 When we tested the performance of tow mode it actually used a little bit more fuel but
00:25:35 it did a better job holding gears and managing our gears given it is a 10-speed auto.
00:25:40 There you go, as we approach our hairpin you can see there it's holding gears really nicely so it's
00:25:46 at 3,000 rpm. I don't have to torture the brakes to come up to this hairpin. It's actually using
00:25:53 a bit of engine braking to take care of that which I love. So this is what's going to preserve your
00:25:57 brakes and make sure you don't run out of brakes when you're coasting down a big hill. So they've
00:26:01 done a really nice job with that. Okay now out of our hairpin, we'll get on the throttle here.
00:26:10 That's full throttle. Yeah it kind of runs out of steam pretty quickly. Definitely not as punchy as
00:26:18 the diesel in the Land Cruiser but sort of moving along okay. I should point out that it's actually
00:26:23 been nice the ride so far which is good. So we'll see what it's like on the choppier section,
00:26:28 especially on these 21s. Let's see how it goes with our climb.
00:26:32 It's flat to the board now.
00:26:36 Yeah look at the gaining speed. It all looks okay.
00:26:41 Yeah it's doing okay. It's not as punchy as I thought it was going to be but it's getting there.
00:26:54 All right let's get over to our faster section. Yeah the ride is really good so I'm kind of
00:26:59 surprised by this. It feels sort of pretty confident and it's sort of not really bucking
00:27:06 about too much which is good. Yeah nice it's actually feeling great here, especially on
00:27:10 these big wheels which I think is pretty impressive. Okay long descent time. The
00:27:15 tow mode's actually doing a great job of sorting all this out but I will try a bit of manual
00:27:18 shifting here. It's a little bit annoying because you've got to use this gear stick with the manual
00:27:23 button and the up and down. I've just locked it there into third gear. It's holding us between
00:27:29 60 and 70 without any problems. Okay choppy section coming up. About 60-70 k's an hour
00:27:37 through here. We'll see what the ride feels like. It's bucking about a little bit but it
00:27:44 does feel pretty composed. I'm happy with how that's performing. Yeah it's not too bad at all.
00:27:52 Okay so yeah look Ford Everest V6, really surprising performer. I think it does lack a
00:27:58 little bit of punch and you're really going to notice that if you go to three and a half tons
00:28:02 and you don't have the family in the car so that is worth keeping in mind. But as an all-rounder
00:28:07 though it kind of just fits the brief in terms of what it's doing. Okay time to give the Pajero
00:28:13 Sport a shot. So just to remind you 2.4 litre four-cylinder turbocharged diesel engine,
00:28:20 eight-speed automatic transmission, 133 kilowatts of power and 430 newton meters of torque,
00:28:25 0 to 100 time of just under 12 seconds and a claimed fuel economy of 8 litres per 100 k's.
00:28:30 This one has two-wheel drive high range but it also has the super select four-wheel drive system
00:28:36 which means you can run it in four-wheel drive high range on sealed surfaces. So I'm going to
00:28:41 flick that system on so that is running for us and then we should be good to go.
00:28:48 Okay so not the fastest thing in the world but we are moving so there's 70, 80
00:28:54 and 100 k's an hour and then we're moving on to our quarter mile marker which is coming up now
00:29:02 and there it is there so now we'll drop the speed back to 100 and set cruise control.
00:29:10 0 to 100 took 12.6 seconds so pretty leisurely, 80 to 120 10.17 seconds so
00:29:18 also pretty leisurely and that's before we even have the load attached.
00:29:21 Then our quarter mile 18.63 seconds terminal velocity of 120 k's now. I think it's the
00:29:28 slowest here so far and then braking 3.5 seconds at 45.81 meters so really not a very impressive
00:29:37 stopping distance either. Okay towing time, James fire up our load.
00:29:42 All right have to really egg it on.
00:29:50 All right 70 k's an hour here.
00:29:54 Oh every time it grabs another gear it just starts running out of puff.
00:30:00 85, 87
00:30:06 90. I'm pinned to the board here 95, 97, 98.
00:30:18 No it's not going to go any faster than that. All right I'm going to roll out of that,
00:30:24 set cruise at 100. So 0 to 100 unladen 12.6. Laden it couldn't get to 100 k's an hour so
00:30:32 best we could do was 90 and that was a 23.24 seconds almost double how long it took to get
00:30:38 to 100 without the trailer. Fuel economy was pretty high too so 9 was the number for unladen
00:30:43 and 32.3 when it was laden but I will say when we did set the cruise here at 100 indicated on
00:30:49 the speedo it actually kind of held that okay and it was working for it but I think it shows you
00:30:54 that even though those numbers you know indicate that it isn't all that grunty it actually will do
00:30:59 the job as long as you don't sort of push it too hard I guess. Okay setting off in the Pajero Sport.
00:31:05 Camera quality is okay but the camera isn't center so I just don't think that any of these car
00:31:12 companies have ever really tested putting a trailer on because they would know that having
00:31:16 a camera so far off center really is quite confusing. So anyway this actually has super
00:31:22 select four-wheel drive which means we can run it in four-wheel drive automatic on sealed surfaces
00:31:28 so I'm just going to engage that now. That means we're going to be sending torque to all four wheels
00:31:35 just in case. It's just a better option than having a two-wheel drive setup. All right wait for that
00:31:41 to activate. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Still waiting. Sometimes the system just doesn't want to
00:31:51 actually engage. All right there it is finally engaged. All right yep and I'm feeling early on
00:31:58 here that we're going to have to really be on this because 430 newton meters of torque isn't exactly
00:32:04 groundbreaking amounts. There we go full throttle here.
00:32:08 All right let's go, let's go. All right there it is.
00:32:13 It's feeling kind of bouncy as well. This tends to have a pretty soft ride and I think that's going
00:32:21 to end up affecting its ability to tow here but we'll see what it's like once we progress through
00:32:26 the track. Coming up to our hairpin now. There is no tow mode or anything like that so it's not
00:32:33 really diving back through the gears. Let's see what it's like once we climb out of here and it
00:32:38 gets a little steeper. All right get on that. All right flat to the board again.
00:32:44 Yeah okay yeah look this has a maximum towing capacity of 3,100 kilos with a brake trail so
00:32:54 we are near the limit of that. I don't think I'd want to be towing three and a half tons
00:32:59 with a vehicle like this. It just doesn't have anywhere near as much punch. It is just struggling
00:33:04 enough as it is here with 2,800 kilos let alone trying to go for the full compliment. Okay time
00:33:09 for the steep climb. Let's see how we go. Line it up. Get on to the throttle. All right that is flat
00:33:20 to the board. Almost at 40 k's an hour. Look it is actually creeping up there in speed. It's kind
00:33:34 of yeah getting around that 50 k an hour mark. It is committed to it though. It's not doing any
00:33:40 funny stuff with the gearbox or anything there so it is sort of remaining committed to those gears
00:33:45 and still moving. So I think the calibration there of the transmission is pretty good.
00:33:50 Crack this up to 80 for our higher speed section here. Yeah look it does feel noticeably softer at
00:33:57 the rear than a lot of the other SUVs that we're testing. It's not terrible but yeah again it's
00:34:03 probably just one of those things if you are going to be doing a lot of towing with a large
00:34:07 caravan or something close to its capacity like this. Kangaroos scare the crap out of me there.
00:34:12 You really probably want to be looking at aftermarket suspension just to settle it down a
00:34:18 little bit but yeah look it's definitely not as bad as I thought it was going to be. It sort of
00:34:24 doesn't have as much punch as it needs but you know it's not a deal breaker in my opinion. Okay
00:34:29 one of the good things here is there are paddle shifters on the steering wheel so we'll crack back
00:34:34 through a couple of these gears and just see what that feels like. So there's fourth, third and third
00:34:42 is slowing us down nicely there from 80 k's an hour. It's actually doing a really nice job so
00:34:48 that just feels like Mitsubishi has thought about all this stuff. I'm just thinking that with the
00:34:52 next generation of Pajero Sport if they do go down the path of a V6 diesel they kind of have
00:34:58 everything they need in terms of the ingredients. It just needs maybe a tow mode and just a bit more
00:35:03 punch out of this engine to really sort of tie it all together. Okay and now our bumpy section down
00:35:07 the bottom here let's see what this feels like. There's a couple of bumps here. Yeah it's not
00:35:13 great. The trailer is kind of throwing the body around a little bit. Yeah it is quite soft at the
00:35:22 front end as well so yeah I think aftermarket suspension if you are going to be towing a bigger
00:35:27 load and certainly if you are going to be doing it for a longer time because it will just give
00:35:30 you a bit more of a confident feel behind the steering wheel. Okey dokey it is time to see how
00:35:36 we go on the Fortuner. So just as a recap this is one of our four-cylinder entrants so 2.8 litre
00:35:41 four-cylinder turbocharged diesel makes 150 kilowatts of power and 500 newton meters of torque.
00:35:47 That's all made into a six-speed automatic transmission. Claimed 0 to 100 time is under
00:35:52 10 seconds or just under and claimed fuel economy is under 8 litres per 100 k's. I think it's worth
00:35:58 pointing out as well here that this is one of I think two vehicles on our test that can't be run
00:36:03 in four-wheel drive high range on sealed surfaces. Now if you do want a bit of an
00:36:07 explainer on why that's the case you can click up here to watch our four-wheel drive controls
00:36:10 explained video. So I'm going to pop this one into sport which just sort of changes the throttle
00:36:17 feel really more than anything and we're going to dial up some revs, kick it off the line and
00:36:22 see how we go. James you're ready? There we go. Feels very leisurely compared to the V6's.
00:36:29 All right there's 80, 100, coming up to our quarter mile marker now.
00:36:36 And there's our quarter mile marker. So we'll drop this down to 100,
00:36:45 set cruise control and do the laps of our bowl. So 0 to 100, 10.97 seconds so that's
00:36:53 fairly leisurely. 80 to 120, 7.5 seconds so that's leisurely as well but it's actually not as bad as
00:37:00 I thought it'd be compared to something like the Everest. It wasn't too far off that. And then our
00:37:04 quarter mile was done in 17.66 seconds with a terminal velocity of 129 kilometres an hour.
00:37:11 And then our brake, that's not bad, so 3.38 seconds and 43.9 metres to stop from 100. So
00:37:19 we're going to pop the trailer on now and see how it goes with our load. All right here we go.
00:37:24 Turn up some revs.
00:37:27 All right.
00:37:30 All right this is positively slower. That's all right we're getting there. It's 60 k's
00:37:37 an hour. We'll see if we can actually hit 100. My foot is flat to the board. 80,
00:37:44 90. Come on baby, let's go, let's go. So close.
00:37:50 Did we hit 100? No we didn't hit 100. Okay no dramas. I'm going to set cruise at 100 k's an
00:38:01 hour. So as a recap 0 to 100 without the trailer was just under 11 seconds. When we put the trailer
00:38:08 on we couldn't get to 100 k's an hour but it took 17.58 seconds to get to 90 kilometres an hour
00:38:14 and fuel economy jumped up to 28.9 when we set cruise control at 100 k's an hour and it was
00:38:20 trying to get to that point across the bowl laps. So it is sizably increased but you can clearly
00:38:26 see the difference here when you go to four cylinders over a V6 it really will struggle
00:38:30 with loads like this because it is having to work much harder and it doesn't have that
00:38:35 torque capability that a V6 does over a four-cylinder. Okay, Fortuna time. So reverse
00:38:41 camera, not great. Offset camera, you know, same old thing I've complained about in a number of
00:38:47 these now. Unlike the Prado which this shares an engine with it can't actually run in four-wheel
00:38:52 drive high range on sealed surfaces so it is two-wheel drive high range only. It does have
00:38:59 a power mode, there is no towing mode so I'm going to pop it into sport mode, see how that goes.
00:39:05 Actually feels surprisingly confident here behind the wheel, even on this steeper hill here it's
00:39:10 sort of getting along okay without too many dramas which is good. It is a noisy engine though,
00:39:16 making a fair bit of racket in the cabin here. Now the ride is interesting, so traditionally
00:39:22 we've complained about the ride in the Fortuna because it's been too firm and just a bit
00:39:26 unsophisticated. Seems to actually help it here with the trailer once you do have that settled
00:39:31 on the rear. This does share a platform with the Hilux but it doesn't ride anything like the Hilux
00:39:37 so it is sort of different enough in that regard. Okay, hairpin. A little bump through there,
00:39:45 it's not too bad. Here comes our climb. Yeah, this is powering along really nicely. It's funny that
00:39:52 even though the Everest has the same torque output as this, this feels much, much quicker so
00:39:58 yeah, pretty impressed with this so far. Worth keeping in mind as well that this
00:40:02 only has a 3,100 kilo brake towing capacity compared to 3,500 in the Everest and the MU-X
00:40:09 but even at 2,800 here it doesn't feel like we're anywhere near the limits of it so
00:40:13 it is interesting if the Hilux ends up getting a V6 and they put it into this, it's actually going
00:40:20 to be a pretty impressive tow vehicle I reckon. Hill time. I get the feeling this is going to be
00:40:25 a bit of a walk in the park for the Fortuner. Let's see what happens. Roll onto the throttle.
00:40:31 Yeah look, it's not quite a walk in the park but it is actually gaining speed really nicely
00:40:41 and it's just started doing a DPF regen as well. Bloody hell, terrible timing. It does that so
00:40:49 often now after the class action Toyota has with diesel particulate filters in Fortuner, Prado
00:40:56 and Hilux, it's now just overactive and constantly doing DPF burns. Okay, we'll pick up the speed
00:41:03 here for our back section. Let's see what this feels like at 80. Yeah, I'm actually a little
00:41:08 bit surprised by this. I wasn't expecting this to be as good as it is given how old this platform
00:41:13 is. I think it's actually a really impressive setup. Okay, engine braking. We've got some
00:41:18 paddle shifters here so let's give these a shot. We're back through the gears, so there's third at
00:41:23 80. Slowing it down a little bit, won't let us go into second. Let's see what kind of speed we need
00:41:30 for second. There's 70. About 60 k's an hour, it'll drop back into second and in terms of engine
00:41:40 braking it's doing a nice job there. Not too many grammars. Time for the choppy section down the
00:41:46 bottom here. Actually feels nicely settled at the rear and I don't know, the rest of the, certainly
00:41:53 the rest of the four-cylinder mob didn't feel as settled as this does right now. So yeah, it's
00:41:59 actually a really impressive job. I was not expecting this from Fortuner, so I know I'm
00:42:04 probably going to keep saying this but they just seem to have it pretty worked out when it comes to
00:42:08 towing on an Aussie road like this. Okay, it is time to have a look at the MU-X. I'll grab my
00:42:16 little sheet here. So, three litre turbocharged four-cylinder diesel engine, six-speed auto,
00:42:21 140 kilowatts of power, 450 newton meters of torque. So this is the same engine they fit to
00:42:26 the D-MAX, which we actually ran here. It was slightly wet when we did the D-MAX but it'll be
00:42:31 interesting to see how those results compare. The claimed 0 to 100 time is around 12 seconds,
00:42:36 so fairly leisurely and fuel economy claim is a little over eight litres per 100 k's.
00:42:40 This is a bit like the Fortuner as well, so we have to run this in two-wheel drive high range
00:42:44 because it is a sealed surface but we'll see how we go. All right, here we go. So it's off the line,
00:42:52 it's actually not bad. So 60, 80, it starts sort of slowing down a little bit now but
00:42:58 we're getting there. So about to cross our quarter mile marker now.
00:43:02 All righty, there it is there and now we'll have a look at our fuel economy.
00:43:09 We're looking at 0 to 100, 11.27 seconds, 80 to 120 in nine seconds, so that is fairly slow.
00:43:18 A quarter mile, 17.63 seconds and at a terminal velocity of 124 k's an hour and then 100 to zero
00:43:25 our stopping time. It's pretty impressive like we saw with the D-MAX as well, 3.04 seconds at 42.63
00:43:32 meters, so a really sort of impressive stopping distance there for the MU-X. So time to give this
00:43:37 a crack with the trailer, load is on, good to go. All right, here we go. Dial up some revs.
00:43:42 All righty, all right, as soon as we grab second gear there it started really taking its time.
00:43:52 All right, there's 70, 80 k's an hour, yeah, struggling here, 90,
00:44:00 see if we'll actually crack 100. Oh, it doesn't look like it. 98, 99,
00:44:08 no, I don't think we're going to hit 100. All right, here we go, 98.
00:44:19 No, I'm not going to get there, so we'll dial it back a touch and set cruise control.
00:44:24 So to recap, zero to 100 was 11.27. With the trailer that jumped up to just under 20 seconds,
00:44:33 but keep in mind that's only at 90 k's an hour, it didn't actually make 100 k's an hour, so
00:44:37 really did struggle a little bit there to get to where it needed to and we did find this with the
00:44:41 other four-cylinder utes when we did this same test a little while ago. Fuel economy went from
00:44:46 a little over 8 to around 27 litres per 100 k's, so it is a big jump up there and you can kind of
00:44:52 see that it is working much harder to keep up speed, so one of the disadvantages of going a
00:44:57 4 instead of a 6 or an 8. Okay, time to go for a drive in the MU-X. So camera quality, not great,
00:45:03 and also pretty frustrating that the camera is off centre too, it makes it really hard to line
00:45:07 everything up where you need it to sit. First impressions are that you really need to be
00:45:14 on it here on this early stage, but so far it is riding pretty nicely. So this is one of those
00:45:20 SUVs that only runs in two-wheel drive high range on sealed surfaces, so you don't have the ability
00:45:28 to run this as a four-wheel drive unless it's on an unsealed surface, so not ideal for towing.
00:45:32 Does have a brake towing capacity of 3,500 kilos though, so in theory a 2,800 kilo trailer
00:45:39 shouldn't really be making it sweat too much, even though it is sweating quite a bit at the moment.
00:45:45 Okay, we are coming down to our hairpin now, see what it feels like through here.
00:45:52 Did notice before when we were on the throttle the engine is pretty noisy,
00:45:57 so when it is working you do hear it inside the cabin. We'll see what it's like on the
00:46:01 climb out of the hairpin. All right, here we go. Yeah, have a listen to that, that is making a ton
00:46:10 of noise inside the cabin here. Yeah, 450 newton meters really doesn't really feel like enough for
00:46:21 this. I can just imagine if you did have three and a half ton on the back it would probably be
00:46:26 struggling considerably more than it is now, so yeah, probably just something to keep in mind if
00:46:31 you do want to tow something larger. I'm flat to the board now and we're losing speed until it kicks
00:46:36 down. Okay, we are approaching our steep hill now. One of the things I will point out is when you do
00:46:42 connect a trailer it automatically switches off your rear cross traffic alert and the blind spot
00:46:49 monitor, so that is something worth keeping in mind. Okay, here is our hill, line it up,
00:46:54 flat to the board. All righty.
00:46:58 Oh, okay, it is struggling here. 41, 42 k's an hour.
00:47:07 All right, once it gets into its torque band it's okay, but we really aren't making a great
00:47:14 deal of progress and this is only 2,800 kilos, so yeah, you can imagine if we had 3,500 on the back,
00:47:20 even if it was just a little bit wet and we're sending all that torque through the rear wheels,
00:47:24 it is kind of, yeah, feels a little undercooked for 3,500. Dial up a bit of speed, see what the
00:47:30 ride feels like. It is sort of, yeah, it is actually kind of floaty and the trailer is
00:47:36 definitely leading the rear of this as we work our way through here, so yeah, it's probably one
00:47:42 of those vehicles that could do with an aftermarket suspension kit like the SsangYong.
00:47:46 That'll probably help settle it as it comes over some of this choppier stuff.
00:47:51 Okay, now our long descent. So there's 80 k's an hour there. I'll just try doing a little bit of
00:47:57 shifting here on my own. Drop that back to third.
00:48:01 Yeah, the gearing seems good. It's sort of holding between 60 and 80 k's an hour there.
00:48:08 Okay, so it's not going to let me drop to second,
00:48:11 but it is holding 75 there. Actually curious to see when it will let me.
00:48:15 Okay, there we go. So high 60's, it lets me drop down to second gear. No paddle shifters,
00:48:22 so it's all just being done here through gear stick, but yeah, the gearing isn't too bad there.
00:48:27 Pop that back into drive and we've got our choppy section down the bottom that we're doing between
00:48:31 sort of 60, 70 k's an hour. Yeah, it is really sort of quite floaty over this stuff and
00:48:38 I think at the rear it's kind of being unsettled by having the weight of the trailer on the tongue
00:48:43 there. So yeah, I think I'd probably be looking at aftermarket suspension if I was going to be
00:48:49 towing consistently with one of these. But yeah, so look, not overly impressed with MU-X in terms
00:48:57 of towing. I think it's okay, but even at 2800 this is sort of right at the comfortable limit
00:49:03 of where I'd want to be. If you had the family and stuff in the car, you're going to be adding
00:49:06 extra weight and it will really struggle to pull something like this or even heavier. So
00:49:10 yeah, just something to keep in mind if you do plan on towing with an MU-X.
00:49:14 Okay, time for Everest number two. This time around this is the four-cylinder. So two litre,
00:49:21 turbocharged four-cylinder diesel, same 10-speed automatic, 154 kilowatts of power, 500 newton
00:49:27 metres of torque. So it does match the Fortuner in terms of torque output, so it'll be interesting
00:49:32 to see how they compare. Zero to 100 in around 10 seconds and a claimed fuel economy of 7.2 litres
00:49:38 per 100 k's. Like the other Everest, this can be run in two-wheel drive, high range or four-wheel
00:49:42 drive automatic, so I've left it in that. There is no sport mode or anything, so I'll just dial
00:49:47 up some revs and away we go, you good James? All right. All right.
00:49:57 Okay, 80, 90, 100 and then on our way to our 400 metre marker.
00:50:03 Okey-dokey, there it is there. So we'll set cruise now to 100 k's an hour. Zero to 100,
00:50:14 10.78 seconds, so slower than the V6, which is what we thought would happen. 80 to 120,
00:50:20 8.4 seconds, so not amazing there when you consider that, again, that's your overtaking speed.
00:50:27 Quarter mile, 17.65 seconds at a terminal velocity of 125. Now our brake, that didn't
00:50:33 really feel that good, so 3.4 seconds at 46.07 metres. That is a long stopping distance. Yeah,
00:50:41 it is. Seems to be a bit of a theme with the Fords here that the braking distances aren't
00:50:45 that impressive, so yeah, that's an interesting one. We'll see how that compares to the others
00:50:49 later on when we sit down to look at our results. Okay, time to give our trailer a shot. James,
00:50:54 if you want to get our load running. All right, so through to 100 k's an hour again.
00:51:01 Yeah, it does feel noticeably slower there, but still sort of moving along okay. We'll
00:51:08 see if we can actually hit 100 k's an hour. 90, 94, 98, oh, just short of 100 k's an hour, so
00:51:22 we're going to kill that there. We'll set our cruise control at 100 and reset our fuel economy
00:51:27 as well. Okay, so that is Everest done in normal and tow mode as well. Some interesting numbers
00:51:33 here. So 0 to 100 without the load was 10.78. With the load, 16 seconds when we were in normal mode,
00:51:40 16.83 in tow mode, and then it didn't get up to 100 k's an hour, so that was our figure to
00:51:47 90 kilometres an hour. And then in terms of economy, so under 8 litres per 100 k's without
00:51:53 a trailer, but with the trailer, 28.4 in normal mode and 29 in tow mode. So we did notice the
00:52:00 difference there when we were driving. It was in a lower gear in tow mode, so I think they design
00:52:04 it so that it uses more fuel, but it gives you access to acceleration a little earlier than it
00:52:09 would if you were in another mode. So there you go, an interesting difference there between
00:52:13 normal mode and tow mode as well for the Everest. So we're about to hop in the four-cylinder Everest,
00:52:19 and I thought I'd show you this. So with the app that comes with the car, you actually have a
00:52:23 trailer light check built into it. So you click on that, hit start, and then what it does, sends a
00:52:27 signal to the car and gets it to start operating the trailer lights. So it does the indicators,
00:52:32 the brakes, and it just gives you a visual indication of everything working, and it means
00:52:36 you don't have to have a second person to help sort of figure out whether it's all actually
00:52:40 coming on and off. So I think that's a great feature, and hopefully we see more of this stuff
00:52:44 coming to new cars today for towing. I do notice immediately as we take off, it is working much
00:52:51 harder than the V6 Everest, but so far so good. This also has a different size of tyre to the
00:52:57 Platinum that we're testing. So this is on 18s, it's got the all-terrain tyre.
00:53:01 So it is going to feel a little different here as well as we get around our course.
00:53:05 Okay, so I've just popped that into tow mode as well. We'll just make sure it operates the
00:53:09 same way that it does on the V6. Yeah, look, you do actually have to work it a little harder,
00:53:14 but it's not struggling as much as I thought it would. 500 Newton metres of torque is a fair old
00:53:20 slab. So here's our descent into the hairpin. It's not diving back through the gears as much as the
00:53:25 V6 Everest was. It's sort of just, actually not diving back through the gears at all, which I
00:53:32 find really interesting, but it was very keen to dive back through gears in the V6 instead.
00:53:37 Alright, here comes our climb out of the hairpin. Flat to the board there.
00:53:42 Yeah, look, it definitely feels like it has less grunt than V6 Everest, but ultimately it is
00:53:52 actually moving along pretty nicely here. Okay, big hill time. It'll be interesting to see how
00:53:57 this goes. Okay, line it up, get on the gas. Alright, here we go. Alright, it's flat to the
00:54:06 board now. Okay, it's climbing. Yeah, look, it's actually gaining speed. This is doing a lot better
00:54:17 than I thought it was actually going to do, given it's missing two cylinders over the V6. It is
00:54:23 sort of capped out there at about 50 under full throttle, but it is getting there. It does feel
00:54:30 like it's wandering a little bit in comparison to the V6. It is still pretty settled, but it does
00:54:36 feel like the trailer is leading the nose of the car. Yeah, it's not bad, but it is just noticeably
00:54:42 different to the V6, which I find interesting, and I wonder if that just comes down to the tyre
00:54:46 sizes there and perhaps a different tune with those, but yeah, it just doesn't feel as planted
00:54:52 as the V6. Okay, our descent. We'll do a bit of manual gear shifting. Yeah, similar vibe here to
00:55:00 the other Everest, where I don't love these buttons on the gear shifter here,
00:55:06 but third gear there, it's starting to pull us down a little bit from 80 k's an hour. Sorry,
00:55:13 the GoPro's in the way, which is why I'm having to look around it. Yeah, I'm quite happy with the
00:55:17 engine braking there. If I release that from manual mode, it's like the tow motor's holding
00:55:22 a pretty high gear there as well to keep it all sort of fairly civilised. And now the bumpy section,
00:55:28 what's it like through here? Not too bad. I did notice this had a bit of sag when we drop the
00:55:32 trailer onto it, and it is sort of porpoising a bit through here, but it's really not the worst
00:55:38 that we've tested. It's actually sort of pretty composed for what it is. I just don't know that
00:55:44 I'd feel super confident towing three and a half tonnes with the four-cylinder version of the
00:55:48 Everest as opposed to the V6, but yeah, look, it does okay. Not terrible, but yeah, I'd probably
00:55:54 be going for the V6 if I was going to be towing a bigger load, just for that added confidence.
00:55:59 Okay, Prado time. Trusty Prado. All right, let's bring this up to a stop. I'll remind you of the
00:56:06 figures. So, same engine as the Fortuner, so 2.8 litre four-cylinder turbo diesel,
00:56:12 mated to a six-speed auto, 150 kilowatts, 500 newton metres. So, around 11.8 seconds,
00:56:18 zero to 100, and fuel economy of under eight litres per 100 k's. Unlike the Fortuner though,
00:56:23 this actually operates as a full-time four-wheel drive. It doesn't have a too high mode that you
00:56:28 can't use on sealed surfaces. So, it'll be interesting to see how it goes. There is no
00:56:31 power button, so I'm just going to be mashing the throttle with some revs.
00:56:40 Okie dokie, so there's 70, 80. It's actually moving along okay, 100 k's an hour.
00:56:48 Feels a little sprightlier than the Fortuner, but we'll see what the numbers say.
00:56:55 There's our quarter mile marker. So, I'll drop the speed down to 100 and set the cruise for
00:57:00 our fuel economy. Okay, so zero to 100, 11.38 seconds, 80 to 120, 8.28 seconds,
00:57:09 quarter mile, 17.89 at a terminal velocity of 126 k's an hour. Now, stop, let's see how that went.
00:57:17 Wow, there you go. First car to break the 40 metre barrier, 2.93 seconds and 39.03 metres.
00:57:25 Okay, towing time with the Prado. It's kind of a quintessential Aussie towing car in a way.
00:57:31 All right, do you want to set our dyno load? Okay, here we go. Through to 100, hopefully.
00:57:37 All right, that is flat on the throttle. It is taking its time. All right, there's 60,
00:57:51 75, 80, 90. Oh, it's slowing right down now. 95, 97, 98. I'm pinned to the border,
00:58:07 so I'm not going to go any higher than that. Okay, so roll out of that. We'll set cruise control.
00:58:13 Zero to 100 without the trailer. It took 11.38 seconds with the trailer. We couldn't get to 100,
00:58:20 but it ended up getting to 90 in 18.58. So, not a terrible result, but, you know,
00:58:26 it got there in the end. Fuel economy went from 8.4 to 30.4, so a bit on the higher side there
00:58:31 as well when you consider how it couldn't break through that 100 marker. Yeah, look, I think it's
00:58:36 okay for what it is, but ultimately you are paying the price there. I've said this before,
00:58:40 comparing this four-cylinder to a V6, and I think the next generation of this will be a V6,
00:58:46 which should really improve the towing performance. Okay, so LandCruiser Prado.
00:58:51 In addition to the Pajero Sport, this is one of the oldest platforms here. It's been around
00:58:57 forever. Four-cylinder turbocharged diesel, brake towing capacity of 3,000 kilos. So we are right
00:59:03 near the limit of this. It really feels like it is struggling, even just as we move off slowly here
00:59:09 to get things moving. 500 newtons from this is the same as the Fortuner, but the Fortuner is lighter
00:59:15 than this, so it'll be interesting to see how they go back to back. Once it is moving though,
00:59:21 it's not too bad. It's not sort of screaming too much. The ride feels fairly sort of nice and
00:59:25 compliant, which is good. Steering is okay as well, which is not a drama. Camera quality, not
00:59:32 very good. Yeah, a bit of an issue with these Toyotas. They really need to sharpen that thing
00:59:36 up. Okay, here comes our hairpin. I can hear that chain tinkling along the ground there.
00:59:41 All right, let's see how it goes around here. Once we get out of the hairpin,
00:59:45 it's a bit of a steep climb. Let's see how that performs.
00:59:49 All right, flat to the board again. Gee, you really have to will it along here.
00:59:57 Yeah, I can see why the towing capacity is just 3,000 kilos, because it does feel like we are
01:00:05 right at the limit of what it's meant to be doing here. It is surprising though, the ride is really
01:00:09 nice and settled, so it's not like it's throwing it around too much. We'll see what it's like in
01:00:13 our higher speed section when we do have a few bumps and stuff. Yeah, but here early on, you
01:00:18 really are having to stay up it. There is no tow mode, so you're just sort of driving along normally
01:00:23 here. There's no sort of settings to actually change to make it perform any differently if
01:00:26 we are actually towing anything. Okay, here's our steep climb. Line it up here. Flat to the board.
01:00:38 All righty, it is having to work for this. It is picking up speed though. There we go, 43, 44.
01:00:44 This is really interesting. It's picking up speed
01:00:50 really well. I was actually surprised by that. I thought it was really going to struggle. I can
01:00:55 actually feel the air conditioning just stop there. What cars do is if you are at 100% throttle,
01:01:02 and you do have something like air conditioning running, it will kill that so that you can
01:01:05 dedicate more power to the engine. That was only brief there. Pick up the speed here for our faster
01:01:11 back section, 80 km/h. This is really surprising. I wasn't expecting this. It's fairly smooth. It's
01:01:18 sort of really well composed, and it doesn't feel like it's all over the place. So it is interesting
01:01:23 that despite the engine feeling a little underdone, it is actually working together as a package here.
01:01:30 And that sounds like a bit of a cliche, but I guess Toyota just kind of knows what they're doing
01:01:34 with this stuff. It doesn't really have all the bells and whistles that some of the others do,
01:01:38 but it is performing pretty well with this big trailer on the rear.
01:01:42 Okay, here's our descent. There's no paddle shifters, so we'll just do a little bit of
01:01:46 shifting here. This S mode will actually hold that maximum gear if you do need it to. So third gear
01:01:54 is slowing us down from 80. It's actually now speeding up a little bit. I'm having to use the
01:01:59 brakes there, and I can't drop down into second. There we go, there's second. So in second it's
01:02:07 just holding us there between 60 and 70. So that gearing is just a little bit funny there,
01:02:12 so it wouldn't let me drop down into second until sort of the whole thing slowed down a little bit.
01:02:17 But it is sort of holding that speed okay. All right, here comes our bumpy section.
01:02:22 Let's slot back here into drive. We'll see what it's like across our bumps and undulations down
01:02:28 here. Yeah, look, it feels fine. It really is quite surprising how different all of these vehicles
01:02:36 feel depending on the load they have on them. This actually does surprisingly well. So there you go,
01:02:43 I was actually expecting the Land Cruiser Prado to be a whole lot worse than it actually is. It
01:02:49 shows you that despite this being quite an old platform, it still actually performs really well
01:02:53 for what it is. So yeah, good job Toyota with the Prado. Looking forward to the next generation
01:02:58 this where they're probably going to cram a V6 into it. Okay, so time to do some performance
01:03:04 testing in the Grand Cherokee L. So we're going to start off by killing stop start. I'll also pop
01:03:11 it into sport mode as well. Sport mode is active. So as a reminder for you, 3.6 litre naturally
01:03:19 aspirated petrol V6. Why they offer that engine at the moment, I don't understand. Eight-speed
01:03:24 automatic, 210 kilowatts of power, 344 newton metres of torque, which really isn't that much.
01:03:30 Zero to 100 in just over eight seconds, which is not bad. Fuel economy is claimed to be a little
01:03:36 under 11 litres per 100 k's. This is a full-time four-wheel drive. Well, it can actually disconnect
01:03:43 the front axle as required, but for all intents and purposes here, it's going to be four-wheel
01:03:48 drive when we do this test. I've popped it into sport mode. Dial up some revs. You good to go,
01:03:53 James? Sounds alright. There's 80.
01:04:01 And we've just passed 100 and we're onto our quarter mile marker coming up here.
01:04:12 Alrighty. There it is there. So what we'll do now is drop this to 100 k's an hour,
01:04:18 take it out of sport mode and set cruise control. Zero to 100 took 10.19 seconds,
01:04:24 which is pretty slow, I reckon, especially given I think the number we should have hit was under 10.
01:04:29 But I guess that is what it is. 80 to 120, 7.18 seconds, which isn't too bad.
01:04:34 And then we had quarter mile in 17.25 seconds with a terminal velocity of 131. And then our
01:04:42 brake, how did that go? Oh, wow. That is really impressive. So 2.99 seconds from 100 to zero
01:04:48 in 40.19 metres. So a really sort of impressive number there.
01:04:51 OK, so time to do our towing load. Let me know when our load is ready.
01:05:02 All right. I'm making a lot of noise, just not really going that fast.
01:05:07 All right, here we go. There's 90. I've got the foot flat to the board. 97, 98, 99.
01:05:19 No, I won't go any higher than 98. So I'm going to drop the speed there,
01:05:27 get the cruise control set to 100. All right, and then we'll reset our fuel economy.
01:05:34 Zero to 100 without the trailer was just over 10 seconds. With the trailer, we couldn't get to 100
01:05:40 and it took 15.4 seconds to get to 90 k's an hour.
01:05:44 Fuel economy went from just over 8 litres per 100 to 40 litres per 100 k's. So, yeah,
01:05:50 I just don't think this engine is designed for towing. It really desperately needs a diesel
01:05:57 turbo V6 or V8, just anything but a naturally aspirated V6 when it comes to towing a load.
01:06:02 OK, time for the Jeep Grand Cherokee L, so the big boy. Now, this is an interesting one. So
01:06:09 camera is excellent. The camera is really high quality. I like that. Towing capacity,
01:06:14 though, not fantastic. So 2,813 kilos is the brake to towing capacity. So we are within 13 kilos of
01:06:22 the limit of that. We set the trailer weight as high as the lowest car would go, which is this.
01:06:28 So this, in theory, should struggle the most. We'll see how it all sort of pans out. I'm going
01:06:32 to pop this into... Actually, I'll just leave it in auto. If I put it in sport mode, it might lower
01:06:37 the car. I don't really want that. So it does have an integrated brake controller, which I like. So
01:06:41 that's an accessory you can get, and I think they've done that really nicely. It all works
01:06:45 pretty straightforward. I am having to really get up in here. The problem is that it makes its peak
01:06:52 torque so high in the rev band that if you don't get up, you'll just hit that torque dead spot
01:06:57 nice and low. Anyway, we'll see how we go. OK, we are coming up to our hairpin now.
01:07:02 The ride isn't too bad. It is sitting on a pretty big set of wheels here, but it seems to be coping
01:07:09 OK with it. It is a little firm, but I guess that's what you expect from the big wheels.
01:07:14 We'll get stuck into it here. It does sound good, but it is having to work.
01:07:25 This little amount of torque probably isn't helping. Yeah, I just don't know why they don't
01:07:31 offer like a V8 or, you know, I think they are working on a turbo 6. That would work great in
01:07:36 this package because you'd actually have an engine capable of shifting this long nicely.
01:07:40 It would probably also bump up the towing capacity to three and a half tons like the
01:07:44 old Grand Cherokee as well. It is making a big old racket here because you've got to be
01:07:49 on it constantly. OK, big hill time. This has the lowest amount of torque of any of the cars
01:07:55 here. So let's see how this goes. Line up our hill. Stuck into it. All right, here we go.
01:08:08 Once it gets into the peak torque band, it actually starts picking up speed nicely.
01:08:12 See what happens once it grabs the next gear and we lose that.
01:08:15 Yeah, it does fall back once you move back a gear, but
01:08:22 it actually pulled up the hill there not too badly. That's the big advantage of
01:08:27 petrol engine. You've got a pretty wide torque band. You don't have to just rely on the gearbox
01:08:32 to be in the right gear. It can really just shuffle through that. OK, on the faster section
01:08:37 here, we'll see what this feels like. Pick up the speed to 80. Yeah, it doesn't feel great.
01:08:44 It's sort of just a bit boaty with the trailer leading the vehicle.
01:08:48 Yeah, look, I'm just sort of trying to get a bit of a feel for it here. It has its moments. It kind
01:08:56 of feels OK and then there are moments where it does feel like it is sort of moving around a little
01:09:00 bit. I'll reserve judgment until we get to the bottom of the steep hill and we see what it's
01:09:04 like on that choppier section. OK, our steep descent. We've got paddle shifters here on the
01:09:08 steering wheel. See what our engine braking is like. That's second gear now at 70 k's an hour.
01:09:15 It's starting to slow us up nicely. So in terms of engine braking, it's actually doing a pretty
01:09:20 good job for a naturally aspirated petrol. OK, our choppy section. Get out of engine
01:09:26 braking there. We'll see what this feels like. It is on the firmer side
01:09:31 and is floating around a little bit there. Let's see what it's like in this last little kink here.
01:09:35 Oh yeah, you can see me actually moving. Oh, we just bottomed something out there.
01:09:43 That's really not good. OK, yeah, that's really not good at all. So yeah, OK, it is, you can see
01:09:50 why it's limited to 2800 kilos. It feels like we are right at the limit of that. Yeah, not great.
01:09:57 OK, it is time to have a look at the Lexus LX. Now, I'll run you through the specs first and
01:10:02 explain why this is a little bit strange. So it uses a twin turbocharged petrol V6 engine,
01:10:07 10-speed auto, 305 kilowatts of power, 650 newton metres of torque and a 0 to 100 time of
01:10:14 a little under seven seconds. Fuel economy claim of just over 12 litres per 100 k's.
01:10:19 This is beneath the skin of twin to the Land Cruiser 300 series, but with the Lexus badge.
01:10:24 In Australia, the 300 series Land Cruiser was only offered with a diesel engine. The Lexus is
01:10:28 available with both the diesel out of the Land Cruiser and this petrol engine. So it is kind of
01:10:32 unique in the Australian market. Now, this car was delivered to us without a tow bar, which means it
01:10:37 is a bit useless for our tow test. So basically what's going to happen is after we do this little
01:10:42 section here, we're going to go get a tow bar fitted to this and then we're going to do all
01:10:46 of our towing testing for it as well. So things might look a little bit different when we actually
01:10:49 get to the towing testing, but that is the reason why. I'm going to pop this into Sport S Plus.
01:10:55 I'll turn traction control off as well. Okay, let's give this a crack. You good, James?
01:11:02 All good.
01:11:03 All right, here we go.
01:11:03 It's nice and quick out of the box there, so kind of rough gear shifts as well. So 100 k's an hour.
01:11:15 Here comes our quarter mile marker.
01:11:17 All righty, there it is there. We'll drop down, have a look at our fuel economy.
01:11:25 Zero to 100, just over seven seconds. 80 to 120 now. This is an impressive number,
01:11:31 4.57 seconds. So that absolutely hauls between 80 and 120. Quarter mile, 15 seconds at a terminal
01:11:38 velocity of 152. And finally, our braking distance. So 2.95 seconds at 41.76 metres. So
01:11:47 not too bad there from the big old Lexus.
01:11:49 Okay, so it is time to do some testing in the Lexus. Like I said before, due to
01:11:56 the vehicle not having a tow bar, we couldn't do the tow testing. So we've now come back
01:12:03 to do the tow testing again. And of course, it is now very wet. So that is a slight issue because
01:12:09 with the Trailer Diamond, it applies a load. It can break enough to make it skid. So we have done
01:12:15 a couple of tests to make sure that's not going to happen. But as a result of that, I'm in lane
01:12:19 two now instead of lane one because it's a little less wet here. So here we go. All right,
01:12:25 this is very nice and strong. So there's 60, 70 k's an hour.
01:12:32 90, 100, no dramas at all there. Good load. Perfect. So we will now reset fuel economy and
01:12:41 set cruise control for a couple of laps of the bowl.
01:12:45 Okay, so how did we go? Zero to 100 took just over seven seconds without the trailer. Adding
01:12:51 the trailer on, on the other hand, it actually managed to break through the 100 k an hour marker
01:12:55 in 11.36 seconds, which is pretty damn impressive when you consider how much force that trailer is
01:13:02 applying to the vehicle. On the fuel economy front, it was using under 10 litres per 100 k's
01:13:07 when the trailer wasn't on there, but it was the second thirstiest, clocking 37.2 litres per 100
01:13:14 kilometres when we had the Trailer Diamond attached. Reverse camera, excellent quality,
01:13:19 love all that stuff, but it has a really annoying flaw that we noticed in the 300 series as well,
01:13:25 where the reverse braking thing just constantly keeps happening. Even when you hook a trailer up,
01:13:30 it tries to slam the brakes on while you're reversing with the trailer. So you have to
01:13:35 manually switch all that stuff off. So it can be just a little bit annoying when it does that, but
01:13:39 not the end of the world. Now, I will just say one more time, it is so wet out here and the hill
01:13:46 road, because I don't use this Proving Ground as much anymore, the hill road is so glassy. So I'll
01:13:52 be just ginger on the throttle through this earlier section here, and then we'll pick up the
01:13:59 pace once we get up to the top, just so I don't end up spearing off the road. Early feel behind
01:14:05 the wheel here is that this just feels very confident. This kind of has the benefit that
01:14:11 the Jeep had where it accelerates nice and smoothly, but this has the addition of turbocharging,
01:14:17 which means that you really do feel that punch behind the wheel. It doesn't sort of sit around,
01:14:22 it's not lazy, it's just ready to pounce when it needs to. The ride though, I'm really not
01:14:26 loving it. I don't love the ride just to begin with with the LX, and it feels not much better
01:14:33 with a load on, because you're putting a lot of weight on the rear of the vehicle, and as a result
01:14:37 of that it's just feeling really bouncy. So let's see what it's like at our back section, but
01:14:42 yeah for the moment I'm not loving it. Okay, hairpin is coming up. This has no tow mode,
01:14:47 and I'm not seeing any engine braking here into the hairpin.
01:14:50 It is so glassy, oh my god. I was just breathing on the brake pedal there, and we just had ABS
01:15:03 activation all the way down the hill, so luckily I stopped in time. But okay, so out of the hairpin
01:15:08 here, onto the throttle. Yeah, this is interesting. So because it has so much weight on the rear,
01:15:14 it's actually spinning up the front a little bit there when I get onto the throttle, which tells
01:15:18 me that it really is sagging down a fair bit at the rear, and that height adjustable suspension,
01:15:24 which worked really well in the Defender, because it was able to basically level it out nice and
01:15:28 quickly and create a smooth surface, this is kind of doing the opposite, and it's sending a lot of
01:15:33 torque to the front there. I would have thought that this would actually be smarter than that,
01:15:37 level out the vehicle and send more torque to the rear given we've got a trailer on.
01:15:40 Very ginger on the brake there. Good lesson in how not to destroy your new Lexus. Okay,
01:15:48 our big hill climb is coming up. It is, like I said, very wet here, so we'll see what it's like
01:15:54 once we round this bend a little bit. Get onto the throttle. Here we go.
01:16:00 Yeah, look, it's plenty strong, but look at that. That is just spinning up the front wheels there
01:16:12 as I'm on the throttle. That's really fascinating. So it feels to me like this is
01:16:20 potentially predominantly front-wheel drive. Yeah, it's really weird. I'm going to have to
01:16:25 do a little bit of research on that and report back, but it does feel like it is just spinning
01:16:29 up the front wheels there instead of sending torque to the rear where it's actually needed.
01:16:33 All right, let's jack up the speed a little bit here for our back section.
01:16:37 It's about 80 k's an hour. Yeah, this ride is really not very good. So it's just very busy,
01:16:44 and there's no confidence about it, and it's just constantly just doing stuff. You can adjust the
01:16:50 ride settings. So we're currently in normal. I might drop it over to comfort just to see if that
01:16:55 actually helps. See, comfort is even worse. It actually feels very boaty now. Go over to sport.
01:17:00 So in sport it is firmer and still really not very good. So yeah, okay. Okay, our big descent.
01:17:11 We'll get a bit of speed up here, test out a bit of engine braking. So there's 80 k's an hour.
01:17:17 We've got paddle shifters, which is great news. There's fourth. Let's try third.
01:17:21 So there's third at about 70, slowing us down there. Drop it back to second. Second for engine
01:17:31 braking is really nice there. So you've got a really wide rev band to work with, so it's able
01:17:35 to slow up the vehicle nicely. Okay, here comes our choppy section down the bottom. Like I said
01:17:41 with the adaptive damping, it just doesn't seem to be doing a very good job here. It's trying to
01:17:46 anticipate bumps, but it's just not doing a very good job of anticipating them and then correcting
01:17:52 as required. And as a result of that, it is very boaty across this stuff. It feels totally different
01:17:59 to the 300 Series, which has shocked me. I thought this would be as good, if not better, than the 300
01:18:03 Series. The engine is definitely very strong, but the ride is just really letting the whole package
01:18:09 down. Likewise, the torque distribution as well. Okay, time to head to Britain with the Defender.
01:18:15 So this uses a three, well actually there's a number of different Defenders, but this particular
01:18:21 spec is the 110 D300 X-Dynamic HSE. Bit of a mouthful. This uses a three litre inline six
01:18:28 cylinder twin turbo diesel, eight speed automatic transmission, so just a standard automatic
01:18:33 transmission, 220 kilowatts of power, 650 newton meters of torque, claimed zero to 100 time of
01:18:38 around seven seconds and claimed fuel economy of under eight litres per 100 k's. This is a full-time
01:18:45 four-wheel drive setup. There is no sort of dynamic mode here, so I'm just going to put it into
01:18:50 S mode and I've just left the actual drive mode itself in comfort and we'll see how we go.
01:19:01 It's got an alright sound. 160, 70, 80, 100 k's an hour and we'll
01:19:08 roll around to our quarter mile marker. It's moving alright for a diesel.
01:19:12 Okay, let's set cruise at 100 and reset our fuel economy.
01:19:20 Zero to 100, 8.1 seconds, so not a bad acceleration time. 80 to 120, 5.87, so again,
01:19:28 really decent overtaking time there as well. Quarter mile, 15.9 seconds at a terminal velocity
01:19:34 of 141 kilometres an hour, so again, pretty good. And 100 to zero, curious to see this. Okay,
01:19:40 so 3.2 seconds, 42.39 metres, so not a bad result and sort of compares well with the other vehicles
01:19:47 here. Okay, James, load on, pop that back into sport. Here we go. Giddy up.
01:19:57 It's pulling like there's no trailer. Oh, no, there we go. It's starting to feel it now. 70, 80,
01:20:03 there's 100 k's an hour. Pretty impressive. Alright, I'm going to set the cruise and reset
01:20:12 our fuel economy. Okay, so we're back in with the Defender. Just as a recap, zero to 100 was
01:20:17 just over eight seconds without the trailer. Went up to 12.6 with the trailer, which really isn't
01:20:22 that bad. It just felt like there was nothing on it when we were accelerating, which is pretty good.
01:20:26 Fuel economy went from just over seven litres per 100 to around 30. Again, that number I think is
01:20:32 pretty impressive when you consider that it didn't actually feel like there was anything going on. It
01:20:35 felt quite effortless. So the fact that you do have the punch when you need it from the diesel
01:20:40 and it doesn't feel like it's dragging too much, I think is great news. And then our GPS speed at
01:20:44 100 was 96 k's an hour. Okay, so we've just noticed something that's actually a bit annoying
01:20:51 / dangerous / probably expensive when it happens to you. So what's happened with this is when you
01:20:57 get out of the Defender, it has a setting where it can go into access height, so it makes it easier
01:21:01 to get in and out of. So basically you open the door, it drops the vehicle, and then the next
01:21:05 time you get in it, it lifts up again when we get up to speed. Problem is, I anticipated that,
01:21:11 and I dropped the vehicle so that we could load our trailer on. But have a look at the clearance
01:21:14 here with that tyre cover. So we basically backed in at the lowest height and just had it all set
01:21:20 up. When I got out of the car, it then self-leveled and adjusted a little bit. So you can imagine if
01:21:24 I had it in the normal height, we brought it in, and that was at that height, and then it got into
01:21:29 its access height, it would have dropped that wheel cover onto the back of the trailer and damaged your
01:21:34 fancy wheel cover. So not a very smart feature and probably something you need to test out a
01:21:39 couple of times before you actually do hitch up a trailer properly. I'm actually sort of looking
01:21:44 forward to seeing how this goes because to me, I don't know, if you're spending this kind of money,
01:21:49 this seems like the ultimate all-rounder. It'll do off-road, it does touring, can it do towing
01:21:54 at three and a half tonnes or up to three and a half tonnes confidently. There is no towing mode
01:21:59 as far as I can tell. The camera was excellent, it actually does have a towing function so that you
01:22:04 can sort of get it to align correctly and do what you need it to do. But just sort of setting off
01:22:08 now, it really does feel incredibly effortless, which is good news. Throttle response is great
01:22:14 and that six-cylinder diesel really has a beautiful amount of punch there. You don't even have to
01:22:19 stick the slipper in and it will start moving along nicely. Sounds good too, which is good news.
01:22:24 And so far, so good on the ride. Okay, coming into our hairpin here, I can actually see it has
01:22:29 gone back through the gears there, so it must know that we have a trailer on there because it is doing
01:22:33 a little bit of engine braking for us. Put around our little hairpin here.
01:22:41 Get on the throttle out of here.
01:22:43 Nice! Yeah, this thing is hauling. It genuinely doesn't actually feel like there's anything on
01:22:52 the back. It is just pulling really confidently and aggressively when you need it to, so
01:22:57 really does feel good. Even on the ride front, this air suspension does a fantastic job of just
01:23:04 making it all feel comfortable. You do have that issue that I mentioned before about it going up
01:23:07 and down on its own, but I'm hoping there's an ability for it to just not do that because that'd
01:23:13 spell disaster if you drop that ball onto your wheel cover there. Okay, big hill time. I get
01:23:21 a sneaking suspicion here that this is not going to be an issue at all, but let's see how it goes.
01:23:26 I'll jump onto the throttle here.
01:23:32 Nice! Yeah, it is pulling along without any problems at all. I've got that pinned to the
01:23:37 board now. There you go, 60 k's an hour and still climbing. Yeah, nice, nice, nice, nice.
01:23:45 Very happy with that. That is unreal. Okay, faster section. Pick up a bit of speed here.
01:23:50 Yeah, this is great. I've got to tell you, this is, this is, leaning towards this as being my
01:23:59 pick, this is fantastic. We still have a few more cars to test, but this is just punting along great
01:24:05 and I don't know, it just feels like a really good all-rounder. It just does everything really well
01:24:11 and I'm struggling to see any sort of downsides to the package. So yeah, it's, it is framing up
01:24:19 to be a really good sort of all-rounder, this Defender. Okay, let's do a little bit of engine
01:24:24 braking here. There are no paddle shifters, so I'm going to slide that over to sport mode and
01:24:29 start rowing back through the gears. There's fourth, sort of holding 60 to 70 k's an hour
01:24:37 there. I'll try dropping back to third. Yeah, nice, in third we're getting a bit more engine
01:24:43 braking there and it's slowing us down. Very good. And now our choppy section. This will be the
01:24:49 ultimate test of how well that air suspension copes with the trailer leading the back of the vehicle.
01:24:55 Very nicely composed. Yeah, really, really good. I think they've focused heavily on making sure this
01:25:03 works as a tow vehicle and it wouldn't surprise me if at the towing limit of three and a half tons,
01:25:09 this felt just as confident as it does here at 2800. I think if you did load the family up,
01:25:14 I just would not feel bad about towing a large load with the family on board either. It is a
01:25:19 really good setup. Okay, get ready for some beautiful soundtrack here because this is the
01:25:27 only naturally aspirated V8 we have on test. 5.6 litre V8, seven-speed automatic, 298 kilowatts of
01:25:35 power, 560 newton metres of torque. 0 to 100 time is claimed to be around six and a half seconds and
01:25:41 fuel economy, unsurprisingly, over 14 litres per 100 k's. This is a full-time four-wheel drive
01:25:47 system so I don't need to faff about with anything. There's no power mode or the power
01:25:51 mode is just pushing the pedal as hard as I can. So let's give it a shot and see how it goes.
01:25:55 Sounds awesome. Alrighty.
01:26:03 It is absolutely hauling. Here comes our quarter mile marker.
01:26:09 Okay, let's set cruise control to 100 k's an hour. It is just there. We'll reset our fuel
01:26:19 economy as well. 0 to 100 took 7.49 seconds, so not the best result in the world. I thought it
01:26:27 could be perhaps a little bit quicker than that but that's what it is. 80 to 120 took 5.18 seconds,
01:26:35 which is actually a pretty good number. So that gives you an idea of how quick it is to
01:26:38 overtake things. Quarter mile, 15.43 seconds at a terminal velocity, 145-ish kilometres an hour,
01:26:44 and then the final one, stopping from 100 k's an hour, took 3.19 seconds and 44.99 metres. So
01:26:51 yeah, it's a big bus and it will take a fairly long distance to stop from 100 k's an hour. So
01:26:56 let's pop our trailer on and see how it goes with a bit of towing.
01:27:04 Gotta love that note. Alright, here we go. 80 k's an hour.
01:27:07 And there is 100. Alrighty, we'll slow her up to 100 k's an hour and set our cruise control
01:27:17 for the fuel economy. Okay, so just to recap, 0 to 100 was 7.5 seconds with the trailer,
01:27:23 barely made a difference, 12.47 seconds. So this absolutely ripped it through to 100 k's an hour.
01:27:30 And then in terms of our fuel economy, it jumped from 10.9 to 35.7. So it is obviously going to
01:27:36 use a fair chunk of fuel if you are towing because it is an NA V8, but it's actually not as bad as I
01:27:40 thought it was going to be. The biggest difference here though is something that we noticed just
01:27:44 before. The GPS speed at 100 k's an hour was actually 92. So I think that if we did bump this
01:27:50 up to 100 real or closer to 100 real, the rest were about 2 k's an hour out, it probably would
01:27:55 push that fuel economy up a little bit as well. But just as a towing vehicle, this is very
01:27:59 confidence inspiring and sort of no hesitation at all. So, you know, and that's what you get from
01:28:05 an NA V8 I reckon. Alrighty, so camera quality, terrible. And also offset as well. So the camera
01:28:14 doesn't line up with the tow ball. It is a little bit tricky to get it all working and it kind of
01:28:18 points to the ground as well. So you don't see a longer perspective, which is a little bit annoying.
01:28:22 But anyway, so naturally aspirated petrol V8, immediately as we set off, I'm having no problems
01:28:30 here getting it up and moving. So very happy with that. I know that a lot of manufacturers
01:28:36 try downsizing to, you know, save on fuel and stuff like that, but ultimately you just cannot
01:28:43 beat having an NA V8 under your right foot. It really just gets things moving nicely.
01:28:47 So initial impressions here, it all feels really nice and effortless behind the wheel in terms of
01:28:53 getting up and moving and throttle. It even doesn't really have to dive down through gears
01:28:59 all that often. It's happy to ride its torque curve to get everything moving. But when it does
01:29:03 dive through the gears, it takes off really nicely. Steering feels also good as well,
01:29:07 even with that weight on the back, it doesn't feel sort of too floaty or ponderous.
01:29:10 Doesn't appear to have a tow mode that I've been able to find. So as we approach our hairpin here,
01:29:15 I'm having to ride the brakes there and it's not really kicking down through gears. It hasn't
01:29:19 noticed that we're actually towing something and that it needs to be assisting with braking.
01:29:25 But yeah, that's okay. We'll test out a bit of gear shifting ourselves when we go down our
01:29:31 steeper hill. Okay, out of our hairpin, get on the throttle here. Got a kick in the guts. Yeah,
01:29:39 nice. Sounds unreal as well. I love that. Okay, big hill time. Let's see how it goes. I'm fairly
01:29:47 confident this will be all right, but let's have a look anyway. I'm keen to hear what it
01:29:51 sounds like once we get up it too. So here we are. Got a kick in the guts here. That's interesting.
01:29:58 I'm flat to the board there and it's not kicking down a gear. So it kind of just moseying up. It
01:30:04 is fine, like it is accelerating without any dramas, but I would have thought it'd grab the
01:30:08 gear below given it's got so much of the rev band to work with. It is hauling though. I love the
01:30:14 sound. That is unreal. Yeah, this is well and truly so effortless with a big old V8 there. So
01:30:21 yeah, no drums there at all. Pick up the speed a little bit now for our back section.
01:30:25 It actually feels pretty stable. I'm quite surprised by this. It doesn't actually feel
01:30:29 like there is anything on the back. Like it is sort of moving around a little bit, but
01:30:33 even here at higher speeds it is just beautifully sort of powering along.
01:30:37 Okay, going down our long descent now. Let's see what it's like with a bit of
01:30:41 self-gear shifting. So no paddle shifters, but I'll just manually row through the cogs here,
01:30:47 drop it back into second and see if that brings us down to that 60 to 70 range.
01:30:51 Yeah, see third gear isn't really giving us a great deal of braking there. I'll try second.
01:30:58 So at second it drops back to about 5,000 RPM and that is providing sufficient engine braking, but
01:31:04 you kind of have third where it's not and it creeps up in speed or second where it's kind of
01:31:10 screaming. Yeah, so it could be a little bit better there in terms of engine braking.
01:31:16 And now our choppy section. Yeah, it is actually really good. It's not bouncing around all that
01:31:23 much and it just feels like the vehicle is in charge. Sometimes when we're going through here
01:31:28 and you do get to the choppier parts, it feels like the trailer is telling the vehicle what to
01:31:32 do, but Patrol actually feels really nice and settled here when it comes to towing. So yeah,
01:31:38 really impressed with the Patrol. I think gearing is a little bit funny there, but
01:31:42 in terms of towing a big load like this, it has absolutely no struggles whatsoever.
01:31:47 Okay, so that was a stack of fun. Before we go through the results and we declare some winners,
01:31:52 I wanted to spend the next few minutes just talking about some numbers and why
01:31:57 these numbers are incredibly critical. So please just listen to this. If you do want to skip ahead
01:32:03 or you totally understand what I'm about to talk about, that's fine, skip ahead. But if you don't,
01:32:07 just spend the next few minutes listening to this and doing a little bit of extra research on top.
01:32:12 Now, what I'm going to do is just run you through some of the numbers that you'll find on the spec
01:32:16 sheets of these vehicles. So we're talking about things like the GCM, the GVM, axle limits,
01:32:21 payload, curb weight. These are all numbers that you're going to see commonly across a lot of these
01:32:26 vehicles. Now, these are incredibly important because even if a vehicle says it can tow 3,000,
01:32:32 3,500 kilograms with a brake trailer, it does not mean that you should. And it also doesn't mean
01:32:37 that you can safely tow that in combination with the vehicle's weight. It is not only stupid and
01:32:43 dangerous, but it is illegal to have an overweight vehicle and an overweight combination mass. So
01:32:48 keep that in mind when you are shopping for one of these vehicles and make sure you do
01:32:52 research on these numbers. So what are these numbers? So GCM, the gross combination mass,
01:32:58 that is the weight of the vehicle and the trailer. There is a maximum here that you are allowed to
01:33:02 drive on the road, and each vehicle also has its own maximum as well that you need to take
01:33:07 into account. GVM, that is your gross vehicle mass. That is the combination of the vehicle's
01:33:12 curb weight plus its payload. That is the maximum weight your vehicle can be on the road with the
01:33:18 vehicle itself, all of its liquids, all of its payload, the passengers, the whole works. It
01:33:23 cannot be any more than this number. And then we have payload. That is the total you can add to
01:33:27 your vehicle, whether it's inside or on the roof. It is the total you can add on top of your curb
01:33:32 weight before you hit the GVM. Curb weight, which is the weight of the vehicle without any passengers
01:33:38 but with its fluids. And finally, you have axle limits, which is the amount of weight you can put
01:33:42 on the front or the rear axle. So I thought I'd give you just a really quick example using the
01:33:47 Pajero Sport. I've got our spec sheet here. I just want to run the numbers on this just to give you
01:33:52 an idea of how much you can actually put in there if you are towing at maximum capacity. So if we
01:33:56 take our GVM, which is 2,775 kilograms, and subtract the curb weight, which is 2,195 kilograms,
01:34:05 leaves us with 580 kilograms. So we'll take off about sort of 50 kilos for the tow bar,
01:34:11 and then we'll take off an additional 310 kilograms, which is what we would probably be
01:34:16 putting on the vehicle as a down ball weight, leaves us with 220 kilograms. Now keep in mind
01:34:22 that 220 kilograms is before you have even set foot in the vehicle. So if we take a couple of
01:34:27 portly Aussies that like KFC like yours truly, take 90 kilos off that plus another 90 kilos for
01:34:34 the passenger, leaves you with 40 kilograms. So I don't know what kids weigh these days, but
01:34:39 that's not many kids and their things to go in the boot of the vehicle. So this does show you that
01:34:44 even with a vehicle that has a 3,100 kilogram brake towing capacity, it leaves you with barely
01:34:51 any room for movement. If you do go with a full towing capacity, the full down ball weight, and
01:34:57 then also load your vehicle up as well. So please do keep that in mind. It is an easy way to get
01:35:02 into a lot of strife in terms of fines and also an easy way to end up with a very unsafe vehicle.
01:35:07 Alrighty, let's jump over to some of the caveats. So one of the main ones I want to talk about here
01:35:13 is our trailers. So I mentioned in the intro to the video that the trailer Dyne is imparting three
01:35:18 kilonewtons of load to each vehicle. It is consistent across each vehicle and it gives
01:35:23 us a really good benchmark to compare the two. It is hard to say that the three kilonewton load
01:35:28 imparted on the vehicle is the equivalent to a 3,000 kilogram trailer as an example, simply
01:35:33 because the trailer itself weighs around 1,600 kilos, including the drawbar. We're then applying
01:35:38 a three kilonewton load. Because it is a constant load, it is hard to compare that to what you would
01:35:43 have if you were towing. You really need to have some conditions around that. So it could be a
01:35:46 3,000 kilo trailer going up a 10% grade or a 1,000 kilogram trailer going up a 40% grade. It is hard
01:35:53 to compare them. But what you can do is say that each of the vehicles have the same load applied
01:35:58 to it. And on our bigger trailer, that came out to 2,800 kilograms, which is the maximum towing
01:36:03 capacity of the vehicle with the lowest maximum, which was the Jeep Grand Cherokee L. We also
01:36:08 measured the down ball weight as well, which came out to exactly 280 kilos. And we distributed the
01:36:12 weight as evenly as we could between both sides of the axles as well. So that was about as good
01:36:18 as we could get that set up. Now, we also looked at sag as well. We measured that to look at our
01:36:23 deltas. You can see them up on the screen there. Now, it is good to know how much sag you have on
01:36:27 a stationary vehicle, but do keep in mind when you are driving, there are a lot of dynamic loads
01:36:32 in play here. So if you do hit a bump, that sag is really going to be amplified a whole lot more
01:36:37 if you do already have a lot of sag to start with. And what you can see here is that the vehicles
01:36:41 with really good air suspension actually worked well. So Defender as an example, yes, it sagged
01:36:46 when the trailer went on, but once the vehicle was started and it got back up to level, it actually
01:36:50 held a really nice solid position as we were driving even across bumps. So that system works
01:36:56 really well. On the other hand, though, you had vehicles like the Lexus LX, which just tried to
01:37:00 overcompensate for some of these road conditions and just didn't take into account the trailer,
01:37:05 and they ended up being all over the place, which I was sort of a little bit disappointed with. But
01:37:09 they are the caveats in terms of tyre pressures. Each of the vehicles was running placarded tyre
01:37:13 pressures for that type of load as well. One final caveat I'll mention as well is
01:37:17 weather conditions. While they were fine for most of the vehicles, we did have that one caveat with
01:37:22 Lexus where we had to bring it back because it didn't have a tow bar installed, and Murphy's Law,
01:37:26 it rained, so that obviously did affect it a little bit there, but ultimately we ended up
01:37:31 getting the results we needed, and it didn't really affect a great deal of us being able to
01:37:35 get an impression out of what that vehicle was like to tow. Okay, let's get on to our results,
01:37:40 and most importantly, the winners of the Car Expert 4WD SUV Towing Test. We'll start off
01:37:46 with the four-cylinder camp first, and we'll look at 0-100 results and also fuel economy.
01:37:50 Slowest in the 0-100s was the Pajero Sport at 12.61 seconds, unladen, and then with the trailer
01:37:58 on board, it took just over 23 seconds to hit 90 k's an hour. It couldn't make 100, so it is a
01:38:05 pretty disappointing result, and I think it shows you that I think it's time for an update, and an
01:38:09 update is coming. The new Triton is about to be revealed, and I think that is going to address
01:38:13 a lot of the problems we're seeing here at the moment with a lot of these numbers. MUX, I think
01:38:18 it's worth calling out that it was also really good in terms of fuel economy. It ended up using
01:38:22 just over 8 litres per 100 k's straight out of the box, and it was 27.4 with the trailer on the
01:38:29 back, and that was the best result that we had. Caveat to that is the Rexton, which had the same
01:38:34 issue that we had with the Musso that we tested with the trailer, where the cruise control wouldn't
01:38:38 keep 100 k's an hour, and it just would just gradually keep going back down to like 70 k's
01:38:42 an hour, and it's just really not a good system that they need to work on, so we kind of just
01:38:46 discounted the fuel economy result there. Now, getting away from four cylinders, let's jump up
01:38:52 to the six and the eight-cylinder vehicles. Quickest to 100, the Lexus LX600, and if you haven't seen
01:38:58 our drag race, we actually drag raced all of these vehicles as well. You can click up here to watch
01:39:02 that, but just over seven seconds to 100, even with the trailer attached, it ended up breaking
01:39:07 the 100 k an hour marker in 11.36 seconds. In fact, all of the six and eight-cylinder vehicles,
01:39:12 with the exception of the Grand Cherokee L, made 100 k's an hour without trailer dying,
01:39:16 and just on the Grand Cherokee L, I mean, this just cements my thought that this is
01:39:21 really an inappropriate tow vehicle. I actually reckon it's an inappropriate replacement for the
01:39:26 last generation Grand Cherokee as well. Instead of fitting it with a diesel or a V8 engine for
01:39:30 Australia, they've gone with that naturally aspirated petrol V6. Not only is it fairly
01:39:35 slow in a straight line, when you do attach the trailer, it is slow as well, but it uses an
01:39:40 incredible amount of fuel. You would have thought like the Patrol or something would have used the
01:39:44 most fuel, but the Grand Cherokee L used just over eight litres per hundred unladen, and that jumped
01:39:49 up to 40 litres per 100 k's when the trailer was attached. So some pretty sort of remarkable stuff.
01:39:56 We did notice as well on the second lap of the bowl with the trailer dying running,
01:39:59 we started getting a lot of engine smells inside the cabin too, even with recirculation on. So
01:40:05 I think it just shows you that it is right at its limits there when it comes to performing these
01:40:09 kinds of tasks. Was also highly disappointed with the Grand Cherokee on our hill road as well.
01:40:15 We actually ended up doing a second run with it to get that additional footage from that
01:40:19 different camera angle because it hit a suspension bump stop, and I think that hitting a suspension
01:40:25 bump stop when you are towing within a vehicle's limits is just entirely, entirely unacceptable.
01:40:29 The standouts outside of that, Nissan Patrol, great job, straight line, great job towing.
01:40:35 Just gives you a lot of confidence when you are just towing anything with that vehicle. It did a
01:40:40 great job on the hill road. Suspension was nice and compliant, and it just never felt like the
01:40:44 trailer was leading the vehicle. Likewise, the Land Cruiser, that was great as well.
01:40:48 Was pretty disappointed with the LX600, so that adaptive damping is just, doesn't really work
01:40:53 well, and then when you put a trailer on, it's like 10 times worse because it's trying to
01:40:57 compensate for everything and it just doesn't really have any idea what it's doing. So,
01:41:01 I wasn't highly impressed with that. Was also shocked to see the front end lift
01:41:05 to the point where we had the front wheel spinning going up our hill. Granted, it was slightly wet,
01:41:11 but there is no situation where an all-wheel drive vehicle should have front wheels spinning
01:41:15 going up a hill. So, I think that was pretty disappointing there on behalf of the Lexus.
01:41:19 Now, what about our braking results? I know that I was really surprised by some of these numbers
01:41:23 when we did the utes a while ago, especially with stuff like the Ranger Raptor. That thing
01:41:27 was horrendous when it came to stopping. This time around, the numbers were really fascinating. So,
01:41:32 both Everest V6 and Biturbo were pretty disappointing in terms of stopping
01:41:36 distances. The Everest was the longest stopping distance at 46 metres, not far behind that,
01:41:41 44.7 for the Everest V6. Going up the other end of the scale, LandCruiser Prado stopped in under
01:41:48 40 metres. I mean, it is remarkable for a vehicle that weighs almost two and a half tonnes that it
01:41:53 stopped in 39 metres on an all-terrain tyre as well. The rest of them were kind of spread out
01:41:58 throughout the bunch there, but it was good to see that they were all sort of roughly within
01:42:02 that 40 metre mark, which I think is fine for drier conditions. Now, on to our winners. So,
01:42:07 I've split this up into two categories. We have Best Four Cylinder and also Best Overall
01:42:12 Towing Vehicle. Best Four Cylinder went to the Ford Everest. It just did a good job there in
01:42:17 terms of fuel economy. I also like the flexibility of being able to run it as a four-wheel drive,
01:42:21 high range on sealed surfaces. It gives you a bit more confidence behind the wheel when you are
01:42:25 towing. The rest of the numbers looked okay. Obviously, highly disappointed there by the
01:42:29 stopping distance, but I think I would be going down the path of getting rid of those all-terrains
01:42:33 and putting a proper highway terrain on if you are focused on towing. Our overall winner. Now,
01:42:39 this vehicle just demonstrated that you can have a jack of all trades, and that is the Land Rover
01:42:44 Defender. It just did such a remarkable job when it came to not only straight-line acceleration and
01:42:49 fuel economy. I mean, it used just over 7 litres per 100 ks without the trailer, and that jumped
01:42:54 up to 30 litres per 100 ks with the trailer. So, quite economical for what it is. I just loved how
01:42:59 with the air suspension it was able to level everything out. When we were going up our hill
01:43:03 road, it just did a commendable job in terms of ensuring I always felt safe behind the wheel.
01:43:07 Never really felt like the trailer was dictating what the vehicle was doing. So, overall, I was
01:43:12 really impressed with that, and I think it is very, very deserving of this Accolade as best
01:43:17 four-wheel drive SUV tow vehicle. Now, before you go popping all these champagne bottles over there
01:43:22 at Land Rover headquarters, it is worth pointing out that we were highly disappointed with the
01:43:27 self-levelling suspension with the exit mode, because we came so close to bashing a hole in
01:43:33 that wheel cover, because the car would just lower itself when you were backed into the trailer, and
01:43:38 obviously that wasn't very well thought out. Or perhaps there's a setting there that we missed,
01:43:41 but I just think that system really needs to be worked on, and hopefully someone watching this is
01:43:47 listening to that. Now, keep in mind we've done drag races. We have an off-road test with all of
01:43:51 these vehicles as well, and you can see that by scrolling down to the description below and
01:43:56 following those links. Now, what did you think about this video? Did you like it? I've put the
01:44:06 results up on the screen there. Well, Sean's put the results up on the screen there for you to have
01:44:09 a look at. If you did like this video, please make sure you like it and you share it with your mates.
01:44:14 Tell us what you would do differently, perhaps, for next time when we do this. I'm always keen
01:44:18 for your feedback. We try and integrate as much of it as we can into our testing, and I'm always
01:44:23 all ears when it comes to that feedback. So, thank you for watching again, and if you haven't done so
01:44:27 already, subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon. But until next time, take it easy.

Recommended

13:17
I
Up next
12 SUV drag race! Patrol v LandCruiser v Lexus LX v Everest v Defender v MU-X v Fortuner v Pajero
CarExpert
1:32:54
Best 4WD SUV off-road: Top 12 4WD SUVs compared - some fail to make it!
CarExpert
1:18:07
Pickup towing test: Top 12 trucks compared in tough ute tests to find the best!
CarExpert
1:03:35
Best pickup off-road: Top 12 dual-cab utes compared - some fail to make it!
CarExpert
51:00
Best SUVs off-road: Top 12 medium SUVs compared - some fail to make it!
CarExpert
12:40
BIGGEST pickup drag race ends with Ranger Raptor vs RAM TRX - all utes go head to head!
CarExpert
21:01
Ford Everest Titanium+ 4x4 vs Toyota Fortuner GR-S: 4x4 SUV Big Test | Top Gear Philippines
Top Gear Philippines
11:37
2023 Toyota HiLux GR Sport: MORE power and torque...Toyota's Ranger Raptor competitor?
CarExpert
27:18
2024 Nissan Patrol Warrior V8 on/off-road review! This SUV is a beast.
CarExpert
22:18
2021 Toyota Fortuner on/off-road review: A HiLux SUV with 7 seats
CarExpert
24:12
2023 Toyota LandCruiser 70 Series on/off-road (inc. 0-100 & braking) review: 4yr wait & V8 pickup!
CarExpert
32:41
2022 Toyota LandCruiser on/off-road detailed review (inc. 0-100): 300 Series Land Cruiser is here!
CarExpert
21:25
2022 Toyota LandCruiser 70 Series review: On/off-road review of Toyota's iconic SUV
CarExpert
20:51
2023 Nissan X-Trail/Rogue hybrid on/off-road e-power review: This or a RAV4 Hybrid?
CarExpert
29:35
2024 Toyota HiLux GR Sport on/off-road review (inc. 0-100): RIP Ranger Raptor?
CarExpert
23:39
Toyota Kluger/Highlander review 2021: This hybrid SUV uses just 6L/100km (39mpg)!
CarExpert
11:23
2024 Toyota LandCruiser Prado! Sway bar disconnect, but NO V6...or hybrid :-( first look
CarExpert
16:02
2023 Toyota Corolla Cross SUV petrol (inc. 0-100) review
CarExpert
20:57
Nissan Navara Pro-4X review 2022: On and off-road review before the Warrior arrives
CarExpert
16:13
Isuzu D-Max vs Nissan Navara vs Toyota Hilux: Big Pickup Test, part one | Top Gear Philippines
Top Gear Philippines
27:30
2023 Toyota HiLux Rogue (inc. 0-100, off-road, autonomy & reverse test) review
CarExpert
28:19
2022 Toyota LandCruiser Sahara ZX on/off-road review (inc. 0-100) 300 Series
CarExpert
23:44
2021 Toyota Prado review: Now 500Nm. On & off-road baby Land Cruiser test.
CarExpert
17:25
2021 Toyota HiLux review: Is the new 500Nm HiLux any good?
CarExpert
16:34
2021 Nissan Navara Warrior review: On-road & off-road detailed test
CarExpert