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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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We drive the 2012 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport, this time with manual transmission

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Published in Weekend Witness Motoring on Saturday July 7, 2012

It’s easy – stay off the asphalt

The last time we drove one of these was in 2009 and little has changed since then. It looks the same, it’s still built in Thailand on the Triton pickup chassis, making it about 200 mm shorter than the big Pajero and it still uses the 3,2-litre, four-cylinder 4M41 DOHC common rail diesel engine. The only difference, if you can call it that, is that the bigger car’s otherwise identical motor has been uprated to 140 kW and 441 Nm from the Sport’s 120 kW and 343 Nm.

Equipment changes include tyre size going from 265/70 R16 to 265/65 R17, four more airbags, rain sensing wipers, automatic headlamps, rear parking distance alarm and 272 mm ventilated disc brakes at the rear to replace the old vehicle’s twin leading shoe drums. The other difference between this vehicle and the one we drove back then, is that this one was fitted with a five-speed manual gearbox. It just seems right to have a stick shift to go with three-mode transfer selection done by means of a lever. Choice of 2H, 4H and 4L can be done on the fly and, unlike some of the electronic devices on offer, selections happen quickly and positively.

Suspension is courtesy of double wishbones with coil springs in front and a three-link arrangement with coils at the rear. Although it’s comfortable enough on rough dirt roads and handled the rocky forest trail with ease, it doesn’t like speed humps and rumble strips very much. The answer is simple – stay off the asphalt. Kidding, of course, but this machine is descended from a twelve-time outright winner of the Dakar Rally after all. Despite using the lower powered motor, the Pajero Sport goes well and pulls strongly although we did notice a tightening of the steering when four-wheel drive is selected. It’s not unpleasant or intrusive, just something we haven’t noticed on other vehicles.

The luggage area measures 416 litres with the third row of seats folded into the floor and 96 with them raised. These chairs are intended for smaller people and are rather fiddly to set up. An uncharitable thought that came to mind was: “No more than once in a lifetime please,” but one could obviously practice a few times before making a final decision. The loading sill is at hip height and the fully sized alloy spare is slung under the floor, like the pickup on which it is based.

A driver’s side niggle was that big feet can get tangled with air conditioner ducting under the dash, leading to some tense braking moments occasionally. We don’t remember this happening with the automatic transmission version back then. Perhaps it has something to do with having a third pedal in the mix and the fact that the manual car’s braking pad is smaller.

On the positive side, even though the smaller-bodied Sport is still pretty big at 4,7 metres, a larger than normal rear window combined with very adequate side glass, makes seeing the world around you very easy. Other comfort items include an electrically adjustable seat for the driver and air conditioning vents with separate controls for those in the rear. The six-speaker radio and CD unit has a pair of RCA sockets to engage personal music boxes. An adaptor cable to match up with the jack plug on your unit is cheap enough from most discount hyperstores and radio shops. Overall, the Pajero Sport is attractively styled inside and out, nicely equipped and worth a second look.

The numbers
Price: 435 900
Engine: Mitsubishi 4M41- 3200 cc DOHC, four-cylinder, turbodiesel
Power: 120 kW at 3500 rpm
Torque: 343 Nm at 2000 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 13,3 seconds
Maximum speed: 178 km/h
Ground clearance: 215 mm
Approach/departure/rampover angles: 36/25/23 degrees
Maximum towing capacity, braked: 1500 kg
Fuel index: 11,2 l/100 km
Tank: 70 litres
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km
Service plan: 5 years/100 000 km at 10 000 km intervals

We drove a third-generation 2.4 in 2021



What We Do

This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.

What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.

My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so I do actually exist.

I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!

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