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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Most, but not all, the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.

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No pretence: 2017 Isuzu KB 300 D-Teq Extended Cab 4x4

(aka D-Max)

Middle child

Posted: 25 April 2017

The numbers
Price: R 479 200
Engine: 2999 cc, commonrail, direct injection, four-cylinder, 16-valve turbodiesel
Power: 130 kW at 3600 rpm
Torque: 380 Nm between 1800 and 2800 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 12.7 seconds (Australian test)
Maximum speed: About 175 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 9.1 l/100 km
Tank: 80 litres
Tare: 1958 kg
Payload: 1083 kg
GVM: 3100 kg
GCM: 6000 kg
Maximum (braked) towing mass: 3500 kg
Approach/departure/ramp over angles: 30.0/22.7/22.4 degrees
Maximum wading depth: 600 mm
Warranty: 5 years/ 120 000 km; with roadside assist
Service plan: 5 years/ 90 000 km; at annual or 15 000 km intervals

Midway between purely workhorse single cabs and more leisure-oriented double cabs (a.k.a. crew cabs), Isuzu offers a kind of middle child. They’re called Extended Cabs and there are four of them – one 2.5-litre in HO tune and three LX models with the 3.0-litre engine.

Our test vehicle was a four-by-four, for when one needs to help with the fencing or the cattle tagging, but 4x2s in manual or automatic are available too. Single cab units are affectionately termed “plaas bakkies” (farmers’ trucks) so perhaps we could call the extended models “plaasvrou (farmer’s wife) bakkies”? 

They have longer cabs with a carpeted cargo bench, that’s accessed by means of half-width doors, behind the seats. To keep private stuff private, while one-upping the other configurations, they feature a stout plastic tote bin that holds about 20 litres of stash provided it doesn’t weigh more than 10 kg. It is both lockable and removable.
 
Many people’s immediate bright idea is to toss in a couple of cushions and let a kid or two ride in there when need arises. Please do not do that. There are no seat belts back there, nor are there any airbags serving that area. Despite that, each half-door features a bin that’s bigger than those in front and both seatbacks have map pockets – probably carried over from the dual cabs. Storage for extra snacks and tackle on fishing trips perhaps?

The load bin is a little shorter to compensate for increased passenger and utility space. As a result its payload is 75 kilograms less than for a single cab, but its GCM and braked towing capacity remain the same as for all other 3.0-litre models.

Like middle children everywhere, they’re short-changed a bit when it comes to the neat stuff. Put another way, not all LXs are created equal. Dual Cab versions score bin bars, roof rails, dual-zone air conditioning, four more airbags (not that Ex-cabs need them all), the top-spec music system and a reversing camera. Extended models do without.

But that’s no real problem because this one’s practical in its own way. That load bench could accommodate a couple of sacks of provisions in rainy weather, flowers and cakes for the church bazaar, a week’s groceries or possibly half a sheep – all kinds of things one doesn’t want to leave within easy public access. And the bin, almost 1.8 metres long, is quite big enough to carry the gazebo, chairs, table and produce for Saturday morning’s market.

Being an Isuzu, it doesn’t claim to be a fashion plate. The engine clatters unashamedly like a traditional diesel, there’s a minimum of expensive toys to go wrong, rubber overlay mats protect the carpeting in front, heave-yourself-in handles are provided at each front door and side steps help those with shorter legs to get in and out. The five-speed manual gearbox doesn’t claim to be the world’s fastest shifter either; you change gear in two deliberate steps – into neutral, into the next ratio. No fuss.

Controls for music, air and cruise are straightforward, the range selector is a simple dial and the hand brake is still the proper lift-up type with a positive action; necessary for when you need to partly engage it for reversing downhill, under power, on those rare occasions when you stall out on a widow-maker. It happens to everybody at some time or another.

Isuzu 4x4s have proved their off-road competence over the years, so they have nothing to prove. Check the numbers in the box at the top. We only took it on a leisurely amble through our test course because it’s fun to do so. It was business as usual.

A recent facelift introduced changes to bonnet, grille and fog lamps, LED running- and tail lights and revised tailgates for LX models, a reversing camera for LX double-cabs, new wheels and a new instrument cluster with gear shift indicator for manual shift models. The USB socket is still the old, small kind unfortunately.

The company says it fitted new rear dampers, with refined rebound settings, on 4x4s to make the ride more compliant. It claims “smoother ride across a greater variety of terrain i.e. improved isolation from highway road vibration and reduced harshness from high impact.” We did not notice any real difference out in the battlefields however. 

We believe this honest and unpretentious “middle child” of the range has merit and reckon it’s worth looking at. After all Abraham Lincoln, Warren Buffett, Herbert Hoover, David Letterman, Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Lopez and Bill Gates are, or were, middle children too.

Test unit from GMSA press fleet



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This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.

Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material.

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