2021 4WD UTE COMPARISON! 6 Dual Cabs Tested - SHOCK WINNER! Experts Expose Truth!

[Music] that's the side steps that's okay i've said it before and i'll say it again this thing is a bloody little mountain goat well it's safe to say that our 2020 year of the year test literally blew up the internet there's over three million views five and a half thousand comments and it also went number one trending on youtube now that's all because we tested these vehicles like they should be testing real world situations and also had industry experts outlining the good the bad and ugly on all these vehicles the information that you can't get anywhere else you can only find out in our year of the year test this year we're going even bigger again you see we're not that interested in testing how squishy the armrest is in a vehicle we want to test these things in the real world tested by experts in real world situations only that way can you make the right decision on what you is for you over the next three days we're going to be torture testing all of these vehicles taking them down tracks you'd absolutely cringe at taking a new four-wheel drive down also be hooking up a big caravan and doing a towing test and also hitting the beach now performance at the end of the day is going to play a huge part of this test but it's not the only thing going to be judging these utes on value for money at the end of the day is the most important criteria so without any further ado let's get into the testing i'm really excited to get into this one it's going to be one of those tests you're going to remember for a long time to come [Music] we've got all the latest dual cab utes to test including the new bt50 and isuzu d-max these rigs are completely different to when we last tested them they'll be up against the last year's winner the mitsubishi triton and last year's runner-up the toyota hilux as much as volkswagen wanted to get us an amrock they didn't have one to give us however we know you want to see one and see it tested so we hit up our instagram to find one lucky fan who's here today with his v6 amrok 550 for us to test here at brave man mate now the vehicle that's supposed to be behind me right now is a nissan navara but as you can see it's not there nissan australia declined to give us a vehicle for this test it's nothing to do with covered reasons or the fact they didn't have a vehicle on their press fleet they cited the fact that it sustained a couple of scratches on last year's test now it seems like a bit of a tall story if you ask me i'm not sure i'll let you be the judge of the real reason it wasn't on there now it didn't score that well in last year's test it was a real shame because i'd love to see the navara tested against these vehicles right here because at the end of the day didn't come first in the dirt roads did have coil rear end it's a good all-around vehicle we are four-wheel drive 24 7. we make no apologies for testing these vehicles off-road at the end of the day these are sort of terrains and sort of conditions you want to see these vehicles tested before you fork out your hard-earned money sadly holden is no longer making vehicles so he couldn't get a colorado for filming [Music] unlike most new vehicle tests who are run by a team of almost zero mechanical knowledge our testing team have over 100 years of combined experience working on dual cabs we've got experts in suspension engine reliability and tuning mechanical and bush proof ability canopies and touring and our mate rocket rod is back to tell you all about transmissions too [Applause] we tested the utes on sand dirt roads and proper four wheel drive tracks here's what we found what we're looking for was the four wheel drive that gave you the most traction the most control on the tougher tracks straight off the showroom floor okay all the utes we're gonna take him up this hill now this is the biggest challenge of the hill got this massive big rut it's on an off cambered big steep section in the in the sunshine coast here just at the back of kennel worth now we've been up here before with our modified vehicles but never before have you tried to take a bunch of stock standard units that have just rolled off the showroom floor this is going to be very interesting to see up and over it's another it's an animal there's no doubt about it it's just very short-footed this time it's got good clearance from the factory rear diff lock i mean what more do you want in a dual cab ute [Music] again just scrape that side step yep that's it keep going just touching that side step the biggest difference we saw this year is a locker in the all-new d-max last year it struggled to drive what others could because it didn't have a factory lockup now a rear locker is now standard in all the 4x4 d-max's which makes such a difference in terrain like this the d-max triton and higher lux really ate up the four-wheel drive tracks the others were only really let down because of their lack of ground clearance standard something that's easily overcome with a lift and slightly bigger tyres i think apart from the ground clearance issues with this car it's very capable yeah still a great little car for forbidding stock standard i really don't think you can go past hitting some tough tracks in the mitsubishi triton great little car now the amarok has an eight speed has had for a long time i think they use the eight-speed auto because they thought that if they use the expert auto they wouldn't need transfer case they were hoping that the first gear would be low enough they're on road and especially while towing and probably even on most sands this is correct it works great the amarok's biggest biggest nemesis is obviously low range downhill um you've got eight years but just first gear doesn't seem to be low enough to be able to make up for not having a low range in the transfer case the fancy traction control system doesn't quite replace the control of a vehicle with proper low range and the engine and transmission are a little touchy for proper forward driving but i've got to say the amrock really impresses me with that four-wheel drive system out of all the vehicles the triton did it the best it's light it's nimble has great ground clearance a rear locker and did just about everything a bit easier than the rest of the four wheel drives it's called top marks with a nine well our judges gave the amarok bottom marks and the rest a pass score really nice to drive very torquey and very responsive i'm driving it on the sand now and look it is a pleasure to drive constant four-wheel drive and we're obviously on the hard sand so it's not really working but when i do drive across in the softer sand it certainly has that power and tool just to pull you through the soft sand and really does it quite effortlessly i'm gonna say the ranger is a little weapon in the sand that two liter motor you can hear it grabbing away and that's fine it's revving like you wouldn't believe highly strong but it's doing very well in the sand and more importantly such a nice drive you've got no chance of getting stuck even in the softness of sand now a lot of people have criticized the two liter motor especially matched up with that auto i'm going to say on the beach it goes alright the amrock immediately made up for its low score on the tough tracks by blowing the others away in the soft sand nothing beats power on the sand and the amrox v6 absolutely loved it the ranger's 10-speed auto and bi-turbo engine did a lot better on the beach than off-road the beauty with all the modern dual cabs is they have punchy little engines with plenty of power for the beach clearance is the only main issue so even if you're just hitting the beach some tyres and suspension will be great to get the belly of your fuel drive up and out of the sand the idea about being in low range and soft sand is that it just takes the load off the transmission it just means that the engine can actually turn the drivetrain much easier and as if you're in high range the engine's really got to work it when the engine's really working you've got a natural resistance against the tyres in soft sand but you've got an engine at the front trying to pull so the torque converters generate massive amounts of heat and but in low range the transmission can actually turn the drive train much easier therefore there's far less load on the torque inverter it won't stall up nowhere near as much it travels temperature is much better that's why it should always be in low range in soft sand the amrock crushed it in the sand with all of its power and scored the highest the ranger was impressive and the rest got a pass mark took things to the next level this year and decided to truly test out the performance these four drives by towing something a lot heavier if you saw our tow vehicle mega test a few weeks ago we concluded that while all these dual cab use state they can tow over three tons they should really stick to that max two and a half ton size so we got ourselves a caravan that's just under two and a half tons to tow with all the utes all utes have a redarc towpro elite fitted for safety you actually have to check the speedo around again to make sure you're not going over the limit i've got two and a half tons on the back well it's towing the van reasonably well the old triton i gotta say it's not as short-footed as a d-max the d-max just stuck to the road better it wasn't dictated terms by the van like the titan is at the moment i've got tim and rob in the vehicle at the moment so i've got a couple of experts with me we've just decided that the reason why this triton is handling the way it is towing this van is the position at rear axle is um too far away from that ball weight and um it's causing the handling to be oh it's compromised quite a lot time in this van these on the upper levels of what i probably feel comfortable towing with the triton um 2200 kilos you know it's not a lightweight but this thing i think it's i think it's able to tie on paper about that sort of 3.1 3.2 tonne i wouldn't like to take that much weight with it to be honest with you you know the heavy braking that ben's not pushing the vehicle around tows really quite well a lot of weight on the back you can feel it it's not stressing the engine out but you definitely know the van is there especially when you come to a hill like this i've owned the sr predecessor and it really really struggled for torque so this is a vast improvement on last year's one for sure it's it's incredible for a v6 to create that much torque down low i can honestly say that i'm not liking these gear changes it's just non-stop this isn't even really that overly hill it's undulating but i wouldn't say it's overly hilly it was pretty clear that the bigger capacity engines did it best the amrock with the turbo v6 was a clear standout these vehicles are made to tow and do it so much easier than the other utes the d-max and bt-50 did it very easy while the ranger's 10-speed automatic was hunting through the gears a lot and worked that little motor very hard and while the triton had the power to pull the caravan he didn't feel as in control probably because it's a lighter four-wheel drive and that rear axle is set a lot closer to the cab giving you the feeling that you've got more ball weight overall the amrock smoked the competition and scored top marks while the ranger and triton dropped a couple of points for being a little underwhelming by bush proof we mean they're built to handle aussie conditions and handle the punishment that us football drivers can put them through while it's only been a year things have changed massively for this category every four-wheel drive has extra sensors cameras and technology plus we've got a couple of vehicles that are completely redesigned this is why we had our mate steve along if there's anyone i owe a carton to it's steve from pinnacle 4x4 steve and his team are responsible for all the maintenance and repair work in our four-wheel drive 24 7 rigs he's worked miracles on our four wheel drives before and has seen just about every problem on every four-wheel drive let's hear his thoughts so with both of these vehicles it appears i've done some re-engineering of the intake they've added in a seal around the bonnet and around the front nose of the vehicle so that it avoids any water from being able to splash up through the front grills and into the high air intake in the engine bay so in comparison to the amarok for instance the way that they've designed this means that the air intakes significantly higher and much more protected from water and dirt coming directly into the intake we found that they're actually running an aluminium tail shaft and out of all the vehicles we've been testing these are the only two that are running an aluminium tail shaft so i suspect what we're going to see from having an aluminium drive shaft in there we're going to start to see issues around getting hung up and getting torn open and if they get any kind of damage it's going to create a weak so something we have noticed while looking at this vehicle we've noticed that it still has a really long intake from the intercooler to the intake manifold itself now this one hasn't been around long enough to find out what's going to happen in the in the long run but we have seen on the 3.2 ranges when they get a few kilometers on them the the length of the intake hose starts to be a problem under heat and expansion and contraction the whole time they have a habit of splitting the actual intake hose most of these other vehicles the intake hose is quite relatively short and we generally don't see that same issue with those particular vehicles we'd be looking to replace the rubber hoses with hard pipes there's some small performance gains to be had out of it but more importantly the longevity and not having a breakdown so with the amarok we've found that the engine itself is a really nice torquey powerful engine but there's a few things that as far as bush proofing goes lets it down a little bit so we've got the air intake for the engine is fairly low down on the right hand side there we've also got the alternator that's fairly low on the right hand side as well at the end of the day when you're when you're off-road and you're going through you know deeper mud deeper water crossings that kind of stuff it gets into the alternator chews all the parts in the alternator up and destroys the alternator and obviously water going up into the air box can cause hydro locking in the engine and cause engine failure so we don't want to see that stuff when we're out full driving most of the other vehicles have their air intake still are still at the front but over the top of the radiator support panel so as far as bush proof goes this is probably lower in the ranking than the rest of them with the amrock's problems it scores a five but bt 50 and d-max get a six for the decision to go for an aluminium drive shaft and the triton and hilux score top marks with an eight for their well thought out designs the biggest talking points in the dual cab market has to be the reliability and performance of these new engines we've got some big changes this year so here's our mate rob from ultimate diesel tuning to run you through the good and the bad of this year's fleet i'm a big fan of the mitsubishi trident it's a four cylinder 2.4 litre turbocharged engine producing about 133 kilowatts and 430 newton meters of torque as a platform they're very reliable similar motor in the mq and the mr trident and we've seen them running for about four years and reliability is a big plus on these motors but one thing that does come back about the trines is they're a little bit laggy down low and what we when we say laggy they're just their throttle response just doesn't take off as quick as you'd like it to through the pedal easily fixed with a custom dyno tune but outside of that they're a really nice motor and drive really well the gearbox and the way they shift is spot on yeah so with mitsubishi the 2.5 litre so the predecessor to the 2.4 that we're running now in these did have a batch that were that had a inconsistent inherent issue with the blocks and that's really what mitsubishi went about to solve that problem that really counted for us and that was that even though the vehicles had exceeded their manufacturer's warranty both kilometers and time if the vehicle failed their testing they just went ahead and replaced the the blocks in those engines regardless we've actually seen vehicles come in showing signs of and symptoms of the issues they had i think it was eight or nine years on the car 300 000 kilometers on it took it in mitsubishi were great about it and put an engine in the car with no fuss as far as product support goes i don't think you can top that so behind me we've got the v6 amarok 3 litre single turbo v6 engine absolute standout in the way of the field we've looked at over the last three days with a really large displacement engine making 165 kilowatts of power and newton meters of torque you might be blown away to actually notice and see the difference in this car after it's been custom dynamic we're talking about this v6 amarok producing similar power and output and torque numbers to your 200 series land cruiser now what does that mean to the person who owns one of these if they're towing a three-ton van this car is going to do it a lot easier than any other cars that we've tested over the three days both the isuzu d-max and the mazda bt-50s have a four cylinder three liter engine in them single turbo charger both engines are identical in both manufacturers what we've seen is the ford jj motor has been around for a long time in light commercial also utility vehicles and the mux what we've seen with the ford jj3 motor is significant changes the blocks different the cylinder head's been revised and different as well we've got new revised crankshaft in those motors as well as also lightweight alloy pistons and a new turbocharger that's gone on the ford jj3 motor reliability is isuzu so we'll certainly see in time as this car gets more kilometers on it the reliability i think that has always been at the forefront of isuzu to produce an engine that is extremely reliable and can do the kilometres over the last three days we've obviously looked at a number of the vehicles it's certainly the ranger that's the most highly strung engine out of all the field of vehicles we've looked at so what that means is obviously the gains just aren't there when it comes to tuning these vehicles because of the factory output from that vehicle so the 3.2 litre ranger runs about 19 psi boost pressure standard the 2-liter bi-turbo engine runs about 29 psi so it's a 10 psi difference between this motor and the 3.2 liter motor we usually see on the 3.2 liter motor about 21 to 22 air fuel ratio and this motor in the 2 liter runs a little bit more richer where it's a down around 18 air fuel ratio running on full throttle the 3.2 litre and the 2-liter engine on paper have very much similar outputs in power and torque but when it comes to getting gains in the way of tuning these vehicles the 3.2 liter is my preference because you can get a lot more torque out of that engine and as we see it's not as stressed in the outputs of fuel and also boost pressure so if you're looking to improve the performance of your vehicle after you purchase it and do some performance upgrades i just don't think the range is the one that's going to get the gains you'd like to see comparatively to some other vehicles we do look at on the review look there were some disappointments with the previous model with the n80 hilux turbo where the weakness within the shaft was a little bit thin and what we did see there were turbo failures in the n80 hilux standard without any performance gains what they've done here with the 2021 hilux is significant they've changed the injectors auxiliary parts they've improved the injectors have been revised in this model and they've also replaced it with a brand new ball bearing turbo which can handle more boost pressure from standard and that's how they're delivering that extra torque in power and kilowatts with this vehicle there you have it once again it's rocks or diamonds with the amrok and it comes up trumps with top marks for its engine the 2-liter bi-turbo ranger engine drops some points here we're very lucky to have australia's number one transmission expert as a great mate nobody knows transmissions like rocket from wholesale automatics here's what he had to say the number one killer of automatic transmissions is obviously heat automatic transmissions are made up of a lot of rubber seals right and those rubber seals obviously over a period of time they go hard they go brittle what causes that to accelerate is actually the heat of the transmission not always how hot you get it but just the fact that the constant cycle is between cold and hot right if you put an oil cooler on and you can get that hot level down a bit more then the cycle is much smaller and you'll actually get another 200 000 case out of an order simply by putting a good oil cooler all automatic transmissions go through a heat cycle now what that means is that the temperature in the morning in your garage and how hot it gets to during that drive cycle so you're going out to the shops in the back it's the temperature rise now the more cycles and the higher those cycle out so the difference between cold and hot is what actually makes the transmission seals go hard and brittle how does a taxi get over a million kilometers out of a car that if you and me were driving it we wouldn't get 300 thousand k's out of it just like the ford ranger all the vehicles here today would actually benefit from the auxiliary oil cooler well unlike most obviously the ford ranger has the only 10 speed in amongst the group here unfortunately the 10-speed is also the only one that's ever had a factory recoil in australia i actually have problems with the pump on them and this is where it gets me a little bit that they did a recall they come in and they didn't fix the problem the way that i thought they should have fixed the problem rather than upgrade redesign or even improve the components all they did is they went after the software and they tried to basically modify the problem so it didn't continue is early days for the 10 speed in australia hopefully all the previous of all the new models coming out now that'll be rectified and hopefully they haven't fixed it by just upgrading you know software by itself hopefully they have actually fixed the problem it doesn't have its own full-time oil cooler it runs a heat exchange system which is basically just using hot water to try and cool hot oil it doesn't even run through the radiator actually has the heat exchange unit bolted on the side of the auto so they actually run the hot water down to the heat exchange unit we have actually seen these heat exchange units in previous models fail and actually get water in the transmission this is a slightly redesigned but if you take it off and compared side by side they'll look almost identical so hopefully they've fixed that up it doesn't seem to use all those gears it tends to jump gears many times it'll instead take it off first gear it'll take off in second gear so why give it 10 gears and then turn around and only use half of them that tends to confuse a lot of the customers i think the 10 speed was only ever put in this car to suit the engine you know and i do believe that the six-speed one although with its own problems was actually a better order than this one so out of the all the range of the vehicles that are here i would actually rate the 10 speed last out of the grid it's the only eight speed in all the cars that we're testing today there wasn't for one small little detail i would have put this transmission first out of the whole group they do have a dedicated oil cooler up the front it's quite a long one but it's very very thin and it's only one cooler trying to do all the work and the only downfall of that really is that for some reason like the ford ranger they put a cooler bypass in it which what that means it's a thermal so it doesn't actually turn that cooler on at all until it gets to about 90 degrees celsius you've got to try and keep the minimum temperature and the maximum temperature as close as you possibly can so when they put the thermal bypass in they're not doing that they're allowing it to get quite warm and that's just the longevity of the transmission is very much compromised right easily fixed if it simply had another auxiliary oil cooler which you know is available and that oil cooler the auxiliary cooler also comes with a thermal bypass so it makes both the coolers the original one and the aftermarket one then flow full time then i would then rate this as the number one auto to be fair i think it's best that i do the isuzu d-max and the mazda bt-50 together obviously they're on the same platforms and if you were to pan from both engine bays they are identical other than the logos that you see on the cover this has the same auto that's in the hilux same auto that's in the mitsubishi titan as what's in the izuzu and the mazda great six-speed auto was refined i couldn't fault it in either of these cars they both run their heat exchange through the radiators the same as the hilux and once again without a doubt they're only shortcoming as i wish they turned around and had an auxiliary oil cooler i strongly believe the mitsubishi has the best transmission package of all of them here there's a couple of reasons even though it has exactly the same transmission that's what's in the hialux the d-max and the mazda bt50 in that it's the only one that comes with an auxiliary oil cooler that i've been raving on about with all the different models mitsubishi actually fits in factory so not only does it go through the radiator as part of the heat exchange it also has this big oil cooler up the front just behind here without a doubt from a transmission point of view my number one choice it's not far off being my number one choice as an overall car as well the trot and amarok go to the top of the class here and the 10-speed range of transmission loses some points the big takeaway here is the important of an aftermarket cooler especially if you're towing great advice mate [Music] as you'd probably already guess no factory suspension we tested was perfect oe suspension gives you less clearance a harsher ride and isn't properly rated to carry the weights we need as tourist or tradies all of these utes could do with a quality aftermarket suspension upgrade however there's still a few inherent issues with a couple of mics that you need to be aware of nathan is one of fulcrum suspension's head engineers and he's here to give you a rundown on each ute suspension setup there's so many hidden details that we'll expose and we all love modifying suspension nathan will show you the best setup for each model we've got these two vehicles together because they're pretty much the most difficult to lift so from factory the upper control arm is super close to the shock absorber at full dru which means you can't increase the droop without that arm hitting that shock absorber so the solution to the upper control arm hitting the shock is aftermarket upper control arms basically they have a different shape that avoids touching that shock absorber so with the amarok it's very similar to the tritone in that it doesn't have a lot of droop travel standard but in the amarox case there's literally nothing you can do about it at full droop the cv shaft boot is very close to the lower control arm and it is the limiting factor you cannot lower that suspension any further or the cv boot literally touches the lower control arm the lower control arm ties into so many parts of the car and it's such an integral structural piece it would require a ton of engineering it just wouldn't be worth doing it'd be hugely expensive so the range has got really long arms it's got a really tall upright that means you've got less aggressive ball joint angles it's got long cv shafts means less aggressive cv angles basically means you can get a bigger lift out of this car than any of the other cars here this new suspension setup is very similar to the hilux in the ranger basically they've moved the upper control arm up in the chassis and they've gone to a much taller upright with the tool upright it means that you do need aftermarket upper control arms to get a good wheel alignment setting after you lift the car we can easily achieve a two inch lift with this in time we will see three inch lifts for sure in my opinion i'd place this suspension set up second behind the ranger they've improved heaps since the previous model well done on azusa and mazda on the suspension overhaul this makes them a great four-wheel drive to build up and drive hard because you can get a bigger better lift in it the ranger wins out here was cleverly designed suspension and the triton amrock dropped points for their issues that severely affect the amount of suspension travel you can get out of them now mate tim from mitz alloy has kitted out more dual cab utes as tourists then you've had hot dinners we all want to modify our tub tray and canopy and tim will give you low down on what you do is best for doing it plus you've got all the information you need on the camera and sensor technology in these rigs and run you through the considerations you need to make when modifying them tim has gone around to all the utes and measured from the axle back to the cab this measurement is essential because it tells him just how much of the canopy would sit forward of the axle where it should be and how much is sitting behind the axle so when trying to decide which vehicle is best for a train canopy there's one main factor that comes into it where that rear axle sits in relation to the rear window if you you can fit a train canopy to all of these vehicles comfortably but it comes down to how much overhang is behind that rear axle you don't want more than say 75 of the tray there having this extra weight behind the axles means you're going to have a poorer ride quality you're going to be putting extra weight on your chassis and you're also going to have light steering as well if you want to tow trailers for instance you're going to have clashes between draw bars so using towing caravans cam trailers not ideal so i've got the triton and the amarok here today because these cars have the closest axle center to the rear window they are not ideal for a standard size tray around the 1800 mark and that's a very common size in the industry if i was to put an 1800 train canopy package onto say a hilux you're looking at about 65 to 70 overhang where if you're coming back to one of these two vehicles you're going to be looking at 80 to 85 at most i would say a 1600 maybe even a 1400 is a comfortable size for these vehicles anyone that would recommend going to an 1800 or longer it is legal but they're doing you wrong they're doing you no favors you're going to have a terrible time a terrible ride so the brand new isuzu d-max and mazda bt50 have come out on the exact same platform this year setting them up for a trainer canopy package you can definitely go to the full size 1800 but we would strongly recommend a 1600 package and maybe a bit a little bit less it's going to be a far more comfortable vehicle to run with it so the axle clearance is about 4 to 450 from the rear window unlike the mitsubishi triton which is about 300 to 350 so you can go that little bit longer train canopy and it's going to be comfortable you can go either way i would prefer to see a 1600 on it it's going to look much better so i have the toyota hilux and the ford ranger wild track both these vehicles can carry an 1800 tray and canopy package with absolutely no dramas at all because their rear axle track is about 500 to 550 mil from the rear window so if you put an 1800 millimeter trail canopy package on one of these vehicles you're looking at about 65 to 70 percent of the tray hanging behind the rear axle and that's good numbers they are the pick for trades and touring vehicles when it comes to tray and canopy packages you can fit big ones i prefer smaller it looks much better you get a better ride but they are by far the best pick of the dual cab market when it comes to train canopy packages doesn't matter which vehicle you get if you're going to fit a train canopy you're going to need to upgrade that suspension and factor in that cost when you're doing it so for purely setting up as a tourer the hilux and ranger get top marks while the amrock and triton drop points as you can't fit a full-size canopy on them safely as true for wheel drivers and campers comfort is a luxury more than a necessity that said if you're forking out your hard earned money on a new ute and is spending heaps of time driving from job site to job site comfort is definitely consideration that needs to be factored in there's no perfect way to measure comfort other than getting all of our experts to judge it on their personal experience in each four-wheel drive the isuzu d-max the all-new one is far nicer to sit in far nicer place to be it's actually a very refined car especially compared to the old workhorse tractor that was the old mighty d-max but i must say i do like the inside of the hilux but wouldn't surprise me this is an upper model one so it's a little unfair on a couple of the other models that were the the middle of the range or towards a base model the other factor here we've weighed in is the different models we've been given mazda's offering is their low mid option where toyota and ford gave us their top spec options comfort scores had the chance of being skewed to the manufacturer who gave us the top spec four-wheel drive the hilux was extremely comfortable but we're also sitting in a near 70 000 version of it given the improvements from izuzu mazda and the hilux this year all four-wheel drives rated very similar in comfort and came down to personal preference so we gave them all a score of eight [Music] we can't talk about the new lot of dual cab utes without discussing the major technology upgrades they all have so both these vehicles are very sophisticated set up they've got a system in them called ida so basically that means it has full sensoring around the vehicle it has cameras at the front and sensors in the rear bumper back here and they will basically monitor your blind spots approaching vehicles from behind and in front the front cameras monitor where you are in the lane on the road and other vehicles coming up now the thing with this system is it will actually correct the steering if something merges on you or you're merging on something else so the reason it's so difficult to build trays and canopies and aftermarket accessories for these vehicles is the sensors are located exactly where the manufacturer designed them to be if you start moving them around they could have adverse effects on way they steer and auto correct at mitts alloy we've put a hell of a lot of time money and effort into r d to make sure these sensors are going back in the right position every vehicle that leaves our premises with these sensors gets road tested and signed off before it goes it's not fair to judge the vehicles on technology because some of you at home will really want this tech as you do a lot of highway and work kilometers all week and it will probably save you a prang or two while some of you don't want the fancy stuff and prefer less tech and less beeps in my opinion the technology is good so long as you can easily turn it off when off road and all these four-wheel drives had that ability what was interesting is we did some digging into some of the extra costs when it comes to technology did you know that if your ute has cameras or rain sensors on the windscreen it'll cost you hundreds more to replace we talked to a windscreen replacement specialist who said if your ute has a camera the replacement glass needs recalibration so it bumps the cost from 750 bucks to over 1200 we recommend working windscreen replacement into your insurance [Music] so one thing worth noting with the amarok it's the only one of all the vehicles that are running rear disc brakes so there's nothing wrong with traditional drum brakes but with disc brakes you get a better longer braking performance so for a towing vehicle you can't go past them well done volkswagen another reason why this is a great tow vehicle the amrock gets top marks and the rest are pass mark so if money isn't a thought for you and you purely want to know what is the highest rated ute from our experts here are your results the hilux would be the winner if that's all we're judging it on however the difference in price in these dual cab utes is monumental not to mention warranty servicing and resale value we here at full drive 24 7 are all about value for money that doesn't mean the cheapest option is the best it means you're not wasting money on something that's cheap and nasty that won't last or wasting money on something that's way too expensive so we're gonna look at the price of all these utes and compare them to the overall scores plus we'll judge them on warranty and service options some of the manufacturers like toyota and ford gave us their high-end models but to be fair we need to compare apples with apples so we're choosing each manufacturer's mid-range auto dual cab utes in most cases spending an extra 10 grand for the top spec version of each ute really only gets you a fancier trim and maybe a slightly nicer sound system so in our opinion we reckon you should save that money and buy a low to mid-range option and spend the rest of that money you save on accessories here are the prices of all the vehicles on the screen these prices are recommended retail prices so you'll definitely be able to get a better price from a dealer however this is the only way to properly compare pricing and remove rotating deals and offers from the judging as expected the triton is by far the cheapest over seven and a half thousand dollars cheaper than the d-max in fact interestingly the d-max cost less than the bt-50 even though they're the same vehicle with a different skin and i reckon you couldn't really go wrong if you chose the d-max or the bt-50 i think it'll come down at the end of the day value for money where can you get the best deal so i'd be going to a number of different dealers and be and essentially play each one off against each other and try and get the best deal on what vehicle you go home with and then there's a considerable jump to the next pack of utes with a hilux sr5 costing nearly sixty thousand dollars and a ranger at sixty thousand price is one thing but we actually jumped online to look at the average resale value across the board while there are so many variables the age-old torque of the toyota tax is still relevant hylux's are holding their value well followed by the d-max ranger amrock and vt50 while they're the cheapest tritons lose a big percentage of the value over time which has been a trend for many years now let's also factor in warranties the industry standard is a five year warranty which is what volkswagen ford and mazda offer toyota have a five year warranty with a potential of an extra two if you get your vehicle serviced at the dealer perfectly on time for that period azusa offers 60 150 000 kilometer warranty and the triton has a 10-year option however for the whole 10 years you need to have it serviced at a mitsubishi dealer one oil change somewhere else and you're straight back to five years they're clearly happy to take the risk to ensure you spend the money in their workshops which on average are considerably more expensive than independent mechanics so in terms of value for money even with the resale value the triton gets top marks followed by the isuzu which pips out the bt50 purely on cost while the hilux resale value is high the cost is a hell of a lot more expensive than the others so it loses points as does the ranger after telling up the scores for value for money let's take a look at the final scores the ranger and amrock are both great vehicles however had some big issues where they lost points the bt 50 got pipped by a point purely on its cost compared to the d-max it's a cracking ute if you had to choose between it and the d-max you'd pretty much be choosing which one you like the look of and now for the top places we've got a tie the triton the hilux and the d-max all three are brilliant use and you're winning no matter which one you choose however you came here to hear a winner so let's break things down even further here's my opinion of the others before we get to the top three no doubt about it that the engine and transmission is probably not the right choice for this vehicle i mean all the experts have said that and i agree with them as well that 10-speed auto is um and a 2-liter twin turbo is not the right setup the 3.2 version would be the pick out of the ranger but the ranger is a serious four-wheel drive off-road it did extremely well and like i said with the towing and long-range touring it makes a serious four-wheel drive there's a lot of aftermarket support for rangers and i think they make a great base to build your dreamful drive this vehicle is going to suit a whole stack of people out there now if you're into towing you might have a big boat or a caravan or a camper trailer this vehicle will tow better than every other vehicle around here now also it was refreshing to test the core version now this is the lower spec v6 model now for the price you can't go wrong if you're into it for a vehicle potentially to go around australia but maybe not do as many hard tracks or not go to remote areas but you wanted to lap up those highway miles this vehicle would tick all your boxes and it would do it in comfort so why did i buy the amarok because for many of you purchasing a new dual cab from home there's going to be something here in this fleet that's going to be really great to suit the purpose that you're after for me that was towing long distance trips across the country and the nine to five grind every day and the amarok with its comfort its drivability that awesome v6 and that awesome gearbox just ticked all the boxes for me now to be honest with you i've always been a secret fan of the bt50 through all the years but none more than this current model because it does share the same platform as the isuzu d-max now at the end of the day when it comes down to it if you're trying to pick out of these two they're both really solid vehicles super reliable they're built well it comes down to personal preference aesthetics to the vehicles not very often you'll hear me talk about the aesthetics of a vehicle but in terms of if you're choosing between a d-max and a bt-50 i reckon that's what it comes down to that and also trying to bargain a good deal with a dealership trying to get the best value for money package you can buy at the end of the day that would swing my vote any cynics are probably thinking how convenient a three-way tie we'd rather the scores were different and it wasn't a tie so it'd be a lot easier for us to choose a winner however when we tallied up the numbers with no bias that's what we ended up with now we've had a little bit of time to reflect now to choose a clear winner we really need to analyze each of the different categories and add more weight to the categories that mean the most for four-wheel drivers now the triton is a fantastic proposition for a weekend warrior or a trader it represents a great value for money buy however there are three inherent problems that i'm going to say are going to stop it from coming number one in this test now they are that it can't tow extremely well it can't carry a full-size canopy or a lot of weight in that tray and the third thing is a suspension you can't modify it properly now these are inherent problems that you can't fix so for that reason alone it doesn't get my pick as the number one position on this year-to-year test however like i said if you're after a good cost option and none of those things really matter to you then the triton is definitely the buy for you so that really leaves the high lux and the d-max to consider which both are awesome vehicles they're very reliable and extremely capable now if it was up to me i would name the winner of this test the dirty 30 but it's not just up to me but i am a toyota man through and through so realistically i would have chosen the toyota hilux as it was the most capable vehicle on this test and i reckon a toyota is built bloody well there's nothing that really comes close to that build quality but there's so many other things to consider now the number one thing to consider is a seven thousand dollar price difference between the same model d-max and that sr5 hilux now that's a lot of money put seven thousand dollars on the table at any aftermarket store and you can get a lot of accessories to make that d-max go a lot further so if you look at it like this that seven thousand dollars could buy potentially a little bit of bar work some suspension tyres and even a snorkel now if you had that d-max kit it up with those accessories next to a stock standard hilux you were given the keys to take it up to cape york which one would you choose for me right i'm gonna take a little bit of bias out of it and look at this objectively it would definitely be the d-max so on the very smallest of margins the d-max as voted by me and our expert is the winner the 2021 four-wheel drive 24-7 year of the year funnily enough we had the same top three last year as this year but this year the winner is different because of the completely new d-max and because of toyota have made engine improvements with a new turbo so that puts them above the triton now what a huge three days of testing this has been and the hardest part of this test to be honest with you is choosing a winner and a loser now the utes are so close in spec levels they perform so well and to be honest with you i'd own any single one of those utes behind me i want to say a big thank you to the experts as well because even i learned so much about these youths and i think it really helped the test but the big question is what do you think of our winner for the 2021 year of the year test and if you had an unlimited budget to purchase any one of these utes what would it be and why let us know in the comments below i'm very keen to go through them and see what you guys have to say now i'm going to go through and choose six winners for the six best answers and you're gonna win yourself a hundred dollar snatch gift voucher thanks again for tuning in make sure you like and subscribe to the best full driving channel on youtube four wheel drive 24 7. see you around next time

Channel: 4WD 24-7

Views: 975,490

Rating: 4.8668327 out of 5

Keywords: 4wd, action, 4x4, offroad, outdoors, travel, overlanding, toyota, nissan, hilux, patrol, landcruiser, adventure, camping, fishing, diesel, petrol, surf, shaun whale, graham cahill, australia, dirty 30, shorty, gq, gu, 80 series, 40 series, 60 series, 79 series, troopy, 4wd action, 4wd 247, 4wd 24/7, toyota hilux, nissan navara, isuzu dmax, mitsubishi triton, holden colorado, volkswagen amarok, mazda bt-50, ford ranger, dual cab ute, best dual cab ute, best 4wd ute

Id: _vFGcfKQ_8s

Length: 45min 47sec (2747 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 10 2021