New Car Test - Touring in the Pajero io

27 July, 1999

By Julian Edgar.

Exhausted, I leant over the handle of the shovel, dry-retching onto the shellgrit sand. Only metres away, the roar of the remorseless breakers pounded the beach, huge waves backed with the power of thousands of kilometres of the Southern Ocean. Majestic in beauty, each wave built to a three metre height, the crest piling higher and higher until, gravity overcoming the friction of the shelving seafloor, it broke onto the beach in a deafening explosion of spray. Still not entirely spent, the white swash slid slyly up the beach, salty tongue slowing to a halt just scant centimetres from the alloy wheels of the irretrievably bogged Pajero io.

Northwards stretched Younghusband Peninsula, hardly more than a 300 metre wide spit of dunes forming the southern boundary of the Coorong National Park. Southwards the beach continued for hundreds of kilometres, the rise and fall of the sandy cusps shrouded in salt spray, the vast length of empty beach apparently totally devoid of help. Only the ruts left along the foredunes by other four wheel drives showed that people had been here; but whether that had been an hour ago, yesterday, or last week, God only knew.

I'd tried digging and then manoeuvrering the Pajero out of the shellgrit mound, but scarcely after the wheels had started to power backwards, the vehicle had slowed, burying itself until the exhaust and gearbox crossmember were again hard against the ground. It was then that I'd turned to Georgina and suggested that she seek help from the fishermen that we'd passed kilometres up the beach. Half and hour ago she'd disappeared at a jog into the mist of salt spray and ever since I'd been dementedly digging. I'd done all I could in freeing the vehicle; now it was a case of simply waiting for the irresistible force of the rising tide to overcome the pathetic wall that I'd constructed to resist the inevitable onslaught....

The choice of the Coorong for a three day test of the baby Pajero had seemed obvious. The five-door version was big enough to easily swallow sufficient gear to provide food, water and shelter for two; the location was only a few hundred kilometres from my base; and the sand and abundant bird life could be used to provide great photographic backgrounds. I casually mentioned the idea to the Mitsubishi PR man when I picked up the car, and he enthusiastically told me that they'd actually done a lot of the original press release photography on a different part of the same beach. So, there was no problem with us going there, then!

The Pajero io

With only 86kW and 1310kg, performance of the little 1.8 four cylinder Pajero was never going to be scintillating - but would that matter? In the days before the trip we drove the car around the city, and found it really did matter. The Pajero is abysmally slow - 0-100 in about 13.6 seconds - and it's even worse than this figure suggests if you don't work the engine hard. Very hard, in fact. Expect to reach the soft rev cut at 7000 rpm frequently if you want to keep up with the cut and thrust of urban traffic.... Gearing is very low - 90km/h in fifth is 3000 rpm - and this gives noisy progress, with both the engine and exhaust intrusive at connecting-road speeds.

In fact, in city conditions the eee-ohhhh is unimpressive. The ride is poor - it feels like it has huge unsprung weight from the front MacPherson strut and 5-link solid rear axle - and the car heels, dives and squats like a dinghy in a tsunami. Handling behaviour depends on whether you select rear wheel drive or constant four wheel drive - both are permissible in all conditions. In RWD - especially on a wet road - the rear LSD combined with the tall ride height can give sudden and dramatic power oversteer, with the mild power understeer of 4WD much more friendly. If you are considering selecting a car such as this purely for urban duties, the performance trade-off over even a cheap new car in handling, braking and acceleration are all quite major, and should be recognised as such.

The eee-ohhhh is easy to drive, being as compact in length and width as a small/medium size wagon. It has power steering, a slick 5 speed (auto also available) and direct steering. Visibility is good and even small adults and children have no difficulty in getting in and out - something that cannot be said for some 'full-size' 4WDs.

With the poor performance, short gearing and strident engine and exhaust noise, to say that we were looking forward to the after-work 200-odd kilometre Friday night haul to the first camping spot is an exaggeration. But our apprehensions were wrong. The little Pajero swallowed with ease all of the camping gear (including some hefty bags of firewood to be burned within the park), with the back seat folding forward to provide a deep, wide cargo area. The presence of the load had the additional benefit of substantially subduing interior noise levels, to the extent that the laden eee-ohhh is as quiet as a conventional car at highway speeds.

While headwinds and inclines require a drop back to fourth or even third gear, again if you're prepared to work the revvy little engine hard, forward progress can be acceptable. In strong gusty crosswinds the car does move around, but in more normal conditions its high-speed stability is excellent. We saw a touch over 160 km/h a few times and the Pajero felt reassuring stable at those speeds. At 120 km/h - 4000 rpm! - the Pajero cruises well, able to put kilometre after kilometre behind it safely and securely. Helping to achieve this at night are the superb headlights - we measured a high beam range of over 1300 metres and the spread is also very good.

The poor aerodynamics, low gearing, hard-working engine and need for frequent gear changes do not add up to the expected poor fuel economy - in open road 120 km/h cruise conditions the eee-ohhhh achieved an average of just better than 12 litres/100 km, improving to about 10 litres/100 km around town. However, the fuel gauge in the test car read pessimistically low, resulting in the need to fill the 53 litre tank every 350 or so kilometres.

The Coorong National Park

We spent the first night in the caravan park of the town of Meningie, moving onto the national park early the next morning. There, after gaining a camping permit (just $5 per car per night), we drove into the Coorong National Park. The old main Adelaide-Melbourne road has been recycled as an access road through the park - it's a dirt surface that the Pajero tackled with aplomb. Corrugations and potholes were absorbed without problems, and with the high-range 4WD selected whenever the surface even looked slippery, handling was good. The only downside when using the Super Select II 4WD system's all-paw traction is that performance is noticeably slowed - for example, a rolling 60-90 km/h in third gear takes 5.8 seconds in 2WD versus 6.4 seconds in 4WD. However, the added handling security when using 4WD on the dirt was very noticeable.

The Coorong is a long, geologically very young, lagoon that lies parallel with the ocean, separated from it by the narrow Younghusband Peninsula. There are two ways of getting to the ocean side of the Coorong - Tea Tree Crossing and 42 Mile Crossing. Tea Tree was 1.5 metres under water, so we moved on to the 42 Mile causeway. This took the Pajero across the Coorong without problems, bringing us to the sand dunes of Younghusband Peninsula. Access to the ocean beach requires the crossing of the Peninsula via a steep, deeply sandy trail. I inspected it, selected the 4WD mode that locks the centre diff, and bowled forward. We made it through without problems, ending up on the beach.

Northwards the beach stretched 100 kilometres to the mouth of Australia's largest river, The Murray. Without extra fuel and recovery equipment like a snatchem strap, jack and sand grids, that was too far to go. But surely driving a few kilometres along the beach wouldn't be much hassle? But it was. Initially, the sand at the top of the narrow beach was firm, and we even stopped for some photos. But then the sand suddenly became soft, the engine revving harder as all four wheels started to lose traction. There was nowhere to turn around. With the wisdom of hindsight, I should have stopped, selected ultra-low locked-diff 4WD, and reversed a few kilometres along our own tracks. But I didn't. Instead, I ducked into a clearing located in the primary dunes, intending to do a U-turn. Immediately, the Pajero sank to its knees in soft white sand. Digging the vehicle out of that wasn't too hard, but the decision to reverse across the sand wheel ruts onto the "firmer" beach was quite definitely the wrong move.....

While I was shovelling countless cubic metres of shellgrit I'd have been considerably happier to know that in fact the tide was on the way out, not rising... Georgina's 25 minute run resulted in the bringing of help - a laconic Aussie fisherman who told Georgina that she'd done a fantastic job ... and added that she now appeared to be suffering from the effects of heat exhaustion! Me? I'd apparently done a "fucking great job of digging out the vehicle". "Excuse the French" he added incongruously.

Firm Ground Camping!

Nearly losing the Pajero io to the Southern Ocean was a quite terrifying experience. Not because of personal danger - we would always have been able to rescue ourselves and the gear - but because until you see the waves almost lapping at the wheels of a brand new car that has been loaned to you, it's hard to realise just how bad it feels. It also clearly demonstrated that anywhere where 4WD is really needed, the chance of getting stuck must always be commensurately high. In fact, it made me wonder about the whole worth of off-road 4WD to the vast majority of holidayers, most of whom don't carry any extraction gear when heading off and so probably never put themselves in a situation where 4WD is required anyway...

But leaving that argument - and a second one about my lack of off-road experience and the mistakes that I made - for another time, we rapidly decided that the only slippery conditions we wanted to see again was a dirt road with sheen of moisture on it! We headed northwards, this time following the main bitumen road back the way that we had come.

In addition to the Coorong, there are several large bodies of water near to the mouth of the Murray - Lake Albert, Lake Alexandrina and various unnamed reaches. These are surrounded by peninsulas devoid of sand dunes, a relevant factor in deciding where to camp! We settled on Long Point, a prominence stretching out into the Coorong.

This area of the park has recently been upgraded in the facilities on offer, but if you're used to five-star hotels, you might be a little taken aback by the solar-powered toilet and lack of electricity, water and gas. However, the Pajero disgorged firewood, a gas stove, torch, food, air mattress, tent....and a much-needed bottle of port!

By now the Pajero io had really grown on us - sure, the seats need more lumbar and side support; it would be nice if you didn't have to work the engine so hard to get anywhere, the wet road handling means that there's a good argument for having the vehicle constant 4WD, and the rear cargo area's interior trim marks very easily. But the longer you drive, the more you appreciate the car's composure on the road, practicality of the wide-opening single rear door, wonderful headlights, roomy interior, intuitive controls, and the ability to put hundreds of fatigue-free kilometres behind you.

Would we take a Pajero io on an extended camping trip? Yes, happily - so long as the destination was away from sandy beaches!