18 July 2025

The 4WD that makes Toyota and Ford feel soft

20 July 2025 | By James Coleman

The 2025 Isuzu MU-X X-Terrain. Photo: James Coleman.

Toyota LandCruiser Prados and Ford Everests are for the soft. The coddled. That’s what I’m left thinking after a week in Isuzu’s equivalent SUV.

I first drove an Isuzu MU-X, belonging to a family member, several years ago. I’ve never covered so little ground with so much noise. It felt like I was driving a full-on B-double, complete with the rowing around in the gearbox and the racket like a tidal wave crashing on a shore whenever I tried to take off from a traffic light.

This new one, two generations on from that model – and an automatic – is a lot more refined.

Isuzu Australia says it’s the result of “over four years of media and customer feedback” and the “most comprehensive update yet”. For starters, there is actual sound-deadening. And, in my range-topping $73,990 X-Terrain model, leather seats with red stitching (the fronts are even heated). And a touchscreen with a 360-degree camera.

But don’t be fooled by this. Or the rounded body with its slim lights, angry air dams and trendy pastel-grey paint. The MU-X is still far from the soccer-mum vibe. This is still something strongman Eddie Hall would feel at home clambering out of.

However, because he wasn’t available for this test, it was up to me.

Fortunately, the ACT Government had finished its annual culling program around the Cotter by late June, which meant the kids and I could put the new MU-X through an expedition on the “4WD-only” Bullen Range Road (accessible from a turn-off along Paddys River Road).

There’d be bumps and puddles, even a creek crossing and other things that kids – and kids in 26-year-old bodies – love.

Yes, the MU-X is still a bit agricultural. The 3-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine responds to kicks from your right foot like a slightly inebriated dragon, even if it does settle down to a near imperceptible rumble at highway speeds.

Photos: James Coleman.

My wife described it as gutless. I think the phrase she was looking for was “not exactly nippy”. It has many guts, as my time off-road and on the highway revealed – 450 Nm of them, in fact. With 3500 kg of braked capacity, it’d be perfect for towing.

Isuzu says it’s also worked hard to improve the handling. But because you are still a long way off the ground – and bolted to broadly the same sort of “ladder-frame” chassis as a Model-T Ford – there is still a fair bit of bouncing and shuddering. The steering is good though – light, but not overly boaty.

It has all the usual safety systems too, but apart from the odd tug on the wheel when you get too close to a white line, they’re not bothersome. It just makes up for it by beeping everywhere else – like when you walk up to it with the key in your pocket, or away from it, or repeatedly for the whole duration of the boot opening. And other times I never fully understood.

Photos: James Coleman.

The rest of the interior feels like it’s meant to be used, with large buttons and a matt-finish touchscreen so it doesn’t show every fingerprint. Perhaps greatest proof of the fact Isuzu knows its audience are the pop-out cupholders under the AC vents – a brilliant feature. I’ve used more annoying coffee tables.

I was unsure how the not-particularly-knobbly tyres would go off-road, particularly on one steep and shaley section of Bullen Range Road. But once I’d switched to low-range 4WD using the small dial by the gear lever, the MU-X clambered up – twice in fact after I reversed back down for the video – without sweat from either me or it.

We may have then become slightly lost along a track that looked like it hadn’t been used by anything but wallabies for years, and we did bail on that one. But only because if things did go awry, it’d be a long walk back to the main road with two kids in tow.

Last year, Isuzu Australia broke a sales record for the MU-X by selling nearly 18,000 – or about 27 per cent more than in 2023. Easy enough to see why when it’s cheaper than the Everest and Prado by $5K to $10K.

So provided buyers can live with a bit more gruffness from the engine and a few more mould lines in the plastics than rivals, I see no reason it won’t break another record this year.