4x4s we'd buy, and how we'd modify them: Mitsubishi Pajero Sport

The Pajero has always been a good package, but not enough people ever give it much thought. 

This sense of being overlooked by a lot of new car buyers may be a nightmare for Mitsubishi’s marketing team, but for you it means you can get a Japanese-built, reliable and capable 4×4 wagon for around the same price as a freshly introduced Chinese wagon. In fact, the top-of-the-line Pajero Sport GSR rings in at around the $65K mark, which is about what you’d fork out for a mid-range Everest.

Even so, the upper end of the Pajero Sport stable is not where I’d be dropping my cash. Sure, you miss out on the eight-inch touchscreen and leather seats, but there’s no better engine on offer, no uprated transmissions, not much of anything that’ll make touring any easier or better, so I’ll save my money for stuff I actually do want.

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For me, the one-step-up-from-the-base-model Pajero Sport GLS is the gee-oh. Mainly because they come with a rear diff-lock, and colour me old-fashioned, but lockers are still the king of the traction aids off-road. Even from stock, the GLS ticks the boxes for weekenders, and the annual pilgrimage to somewhere awesome that can’t be reached by the masses in their beige cardigans, ahem, Camrys.

By buying the cheaper model, it makes sense that you have a few bucks left over for mods. The list should be familiar to most by now: bar-work, long-range tanks, racks, drawers, batteries and power-ups, and finally, some suspension and rubber to get the spring rates dialled.

The 2.4L twin-turbo-deezy, while an improvement on the older models, is still about as exciting as a dissertation on Taylor Swift’s back catalogue, so an ECU tune or quality plug-in-play module (whichever you prefer, me, I’m a tune guy) for around two-grand would be my first stop.

From there, a quality alloy bull bar and winch which would set me back roughly five gorillas. I like modern alloy bars (like the Rival bars for around $3500) because they save on weight, incorporate recovery points and have provision for an electric winder. I do a bunch of solo travel, so that means a lot to me.

While drawers and roof racks are great, I don’t think I’d bother here. Just use the old plastic boxes in the back and forgo the roof-topper for a swag-n-stretcher, which is still the best and easiest set-up in the world. Fight me. I’d use my remaining savings on the best two-inch lifted suspension I could afford (I reckon Bilstein are up there as one of the best in performance versus cost for a Pajero Sport) and some hybrid AT rubber – I’ve always run Japanese or American tyres and never gone wrong (Toyo, Nitto, Mickey Tees, Goodyear, etc.).

That’d be stage one. After a few months of letting my bank account recover, I’d look into a lithium set-up (around the 100A mark) for my fridge, some LED spotties, a long-range tank and, if I could stretch it, a front locker. With that, I reckon there’d be fewer than a dozen gazetted tracks in the country I couldn’t confidently tackle.