Item: Mitsubishi Shogun Sport
Rating: 2
Author: What Car? Team

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Introduction

Performance & drive

Interior

Passenger & boot space

Costs & verdict

Mitsubishi has a fantastic reliability record, so although we don’t have any specific data for the Shogun Sport, you can reasonably hope that there won’t be constant trips to the dealer. If you do have any trouble, the car comes with an excellent five-year or 62,500-mile warranty as standard.

The Shogun Sport is expensive, with all of its key rivals proving better and cheaper – apart from the equally disappointing Toyota Land Cruiser, which costs slightly more. And the Shogun Sport will be more expensive to run than its mainstream rivals, because the 2.4-litre diesel engine has very poor claimed fuel economy and CO2 emissions are extremely high.

There’s a good amount of standard kit, though, with 3 trim getting 18in alloy wheels, a leather interior, dual-zone climate control, LED lights, a reversing camera, parking sensors and hill descent control. But if you want some decent safety equipment, you have to move up to 4 trim, which gets heated front seats, adaptive cruise control, blindspot monitoring, automatic emergency braking and a 360deg camera. Because of these safety aids, we’d say 4 is worth the step up if you’re set on a Shogun Sport.

<h3>&nbsp;</h3>

The strongest aspect of the Shogun Sport’s driving ability is what it can do on the rough stuff. All cars get a useful amount of off-road kit, such as hill descent control, a locking rear differential and four-wheel drive with four terrain settings, as well as a heady ground clearance of 218mm. The Shogun Sport also gets an impressive towing capacity of 3.1 tonnes, which is comfortably more than most of its seven-seat rivals – and that’s important, considering 90% of Shogun Sport buyers opt to fit a tow bar to it.

However, aside from these rugged workhorse-like qualities, the driving experience is pretty poor. The only engine available is a 2.4-litre diesel unit that has a particularly agricultural feel to it, making a lot of noise at idle and under any kind of acceleration, although it does settle down at a cruise. Along with the engine noise, there’s a fair bit of wind and road roar, too. Performance wise, it’s quick enough to get to motorway speeds without too much trouble, and you’ll be able to overtake without needing to swallow too many brave pills, but the Shogun Sport never feels quick. In fact, it’s one of the slowest seven-seaters you can buy, with only the Toyota Land Cruiser proving even more sluggish in the 0-62mph ‘sprint’.

All models get an eight-speed automatic transmission that seems slightly hesitant to shift up, despite having a high number of ratios, meaning it can hang onto gears longer than you’d like and leave the engine whining. When it does shift, though, it does so fairly quickly and smoothly, and you have the option of using paddle shifters on the steering wheel to shift gears yourself. When you do, you’ll find the gearbox is actually pretty responsive to your commands.

The steering is very poor, offering hardly any feel and feeling rather imprecise. The steering wheel also squirms in your hands as the wheels follow the lumps and bumps in the road, so you need to make fairly constant steering inputs to keep it on the straight ahead – something that can get quite tiresome.

If you enter a corner with any sort of gusto, you’ll find yourself waiting quite a while between turning the steering wheel and the Shogun Sport actually turning in. Grip levels are quite low and there’s an awful lot of body lean even at moderate speeds. This is not a car that likes to be driven quickly, reminding us more of pick-up trucks than modern SUVs. That’s no surprise, since the Shogun Sport shares its underpinnings with the L200.

Still, ride comfort is more important than handling in something like this. Although it’s quite soft, potholes, ridges and other road imperfections cause it to thump uncomfortably and shimmy around. This is the case whether you’re pottering through town or hammering down the motorway. On a smooth piece of asphalt, it is reasonably comfortable, though.

Despite all the criticism you could throw at the previous Mitsubishi&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whatcar.com/mitsubishi/shogun-sport/4x4/used-review/n510">Shogun Sport</a>&nbsp;sold between 2000 and 2007 – a one-star car by our calculations – it did seem as though it was built to last.

<a href="https://www.whatcar.com/make/mitsubishi">Mitsubishi</a>&nbsp;says that, of the 18,500 sold in the UK, there are still more than 12,000 on our roads today. Indeed, Mitsubishi’s exemplary reliability record should be the envy of any manufacturer.

So that’s at least one sign of encouragement for the new Shogun Sport. It’s a diesel-powered seven-seat large SUV that aims to be “as talented as it is tough”, with a focus on off-road ability and practicality.

The Shogun Sport counts seven-seat rivals such as the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whatcar.com/land-rover/discovery-sport/4x4/review/n17358">Land Rover Discovery Sport</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whatcar.com/kia/sorento/4x4/review/n18">Kia Sorento</a>and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whatcar.com/toyota/land-cruiser/4x4/review/n17251">Toyota Land Cruiser</a>&nbsp;among its rivals – but is it a better car? Read on over the next few pages to find out.

And, whichever car you choose, don't forget to head on over to our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.whatcar.com/new-car-deals">New Car Buying</a>&nbsp;site to find some tempting deals.

The driving position is fairly decent, although the steering wheel could do with more adjustment for rake and reach. The seats feel quite comfortable and spongey but lack side support, so you’ll be squirming around quite a lot through corners. Visibility is good, with a fine view out of the front and some big door mirrors.

It’s worth noting that because UK Shogun Sports are based on Australian models, the steering wheel stalks are the other way round to what you would expect. So that means the indicators are controlled via the right one and the wipers via the left. This isn’t necessarily something to mark the car down on; it just takes a bit of adjustment the first few times you drive the car.

The kindest thing to say about the infotainment system is that it offers Apple CarPlay and Android Auto as standard, so when you get frustrated with the slow and convoluted Mitsubishi system, you can just plug in your smartphone and use that instead.

Meanwhile, the Shogun Sport’s interior feels particularly low-rent. The buttons and dials feel cheap and you won’t find any squishy plastics anywhere. Instead, the interior is made of scratchy black plastic with a few unconvincing metallic trims. Still, it may not be pretty, but it’ll undoubtedly be hard-wearing.

While Mitsubishi sells both the Mirage hatchback and the L200 pick-up truck in the UK, the core of its range is in SUVs – handy, since this is one of the largest markets worldwide.

There’s an SUV to suit everyone, too. If you’re a company car driver, the Outlander PHEV mixes low fuel bills with a spacious interior. The ASX, meanwhile, is attractively priced against key rivals such as the Nissan Qashqai and Seat Ateca. Or, if you prefer mud to asphalt, the Shogun offers genuine off-road ability.

More SUVs are on the way, too, including one that’s rumoured to bring back the ‘Evo’ name made famous in rallying.

MITSUBISHI

SHOGUN SPORT

Old-school inside and out, but not in a good way. Unless you’ll need its off-road ability regularly, you’re better off with its seven-seat rivals

For such a big car, it’s surprising how cramped the front seats in the Shogun Sport feel. The centre console design encroaches on knee room for the driver and front passenger, so it doesn’t feel like there’s a particularly space to squeeze your legs into, while elbow room feels restricted compared with rivals. You have enough space, but it’s strange that it’s not more generous considering the size of the car. Head room and shoulder room are good up front, though.

In the middle row, particularly tall passengers may find head room a little restricted, but otherwise there’s plenty of leg room and shoulder room. Handily, there’s only a tiny hump in the centre of the floor, so middle passengers won’t be uncomfortably straddling anything. The seats can be folded down or even tumbled forward completely to let you either increase capacity for load lugging or allow access to the third row. If you want to collapse the seats, a lever at the base helps them spring forward easily, and if you want to them back in place you just need to pull the seats back; they feel very light, so it’s not difficult.

Seven seats are standard, and if you end up in the third row you’ll find space is fairly respectable for the class. The two seatbases are angled and the floor is quite high in relation to the seats, so you’ll have to bend your knees quite a lot to squeeze in. Head room is predictably limited, but there’s enough space in that rearmost row to shuttle around a couple of adults on a short journey without them being too uncomfortable.

With all the seats in place, boot space is absolutely tiny – far smaller than that offered by the competition – but even with those third-row seats stowed away, boot space isn’t impressive compared with what you get in rival cars. It’s still more than enough for a big family’s holiday luggage, but others offer more for similar money. You can fold down all the rear seats to increase loading capacity, but when you do there are quite a lot of bumps in the floor, so it will be difficult to push in large items from the back.

<h3>&nbsp;</h3>

Old-school inside and out, but not in a good way. Unless you’ll need its off-road ability regularly, you’re better off with its seven-seat rivals

<h2>What we're looking for:</h2><ul><li>Plenty of space for all passengers</li> <li>Large boot with lots of clever storage solutions</li> <li>Good fuel economy and running costs</li> <li>All-round comfort</li> <li>High-quality interior finish</li></ul>

We define a large SUV as anything longer than 4.5 metres. These cars aren’t usually particularly cheap to buy or lease, so in return we expect a roomy cabin, a lengthy list of standard equipment and excellent cruising refinement. A few models in this class are two-wheel drive, but the vast majority have four-wheel drive for at least a modicum of off-road ability.

The Mazda CX-5 is firmly road-focused, but its 2.0-litre petrol engine is a strong, refined performer, making it looks good value for less than&nbsp;£25k. If you can stretch the budget a fair bit, the Audi Q5 provides a combination of comfort, driving prowess, quality and space that's hard to beat. Unlike some rivals, it can't be had with seven seats, though.

A more affordable, yet well-equipped alternative is the Peugeot 5008. It’s more than capable of coping with family life&nbsp;– and all versions have seven seats as standard.&nbsp;

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Read the definitive Mitsubishi Shogun Sport 2022 review from the expert What Car? team. Check specs, prices, performance and compare with similar cars.

Despite all the criticism you could throw at the previous Mitsubishi Shogun Sport sold between 2000 and 2007 – a one-star car by our calculations – it did seem as though it was built to last.,Mitsubishi says that, of the 18,500 sold in the UK, there are still more than 12,000 on our roads today. Indeed, Mitsubishi’s exemplary reliability record should be the envy of any manufacturer.,So that’s at least one sign of encouragement for the new Shogun Sport. It’s a diesel-powered seven-seat large SUV that aims to be “as talented as it is tough”, with a focus on off-road ability and practicality.The Shogun Sport counts seven-seat rivals such as the Land Rover Discovery Sport, Kia Sorentoand Toyota Land Cruiser among its rivals – but is it a better car? Read on over the next few pages to find out.And, whichever car you choose, don't forget to head on over to our New Car Buying site to find some tempting deals.

Available to order now >

Mitsubishi Shogun Sport review

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