Pick-up truck mega test comparison
Do you think pick-ups are just farm or building site workhorses? Think again. Here, we choose the best of them from the UK’s eight main contenders...
List price ex VAT £29,074
Ford Ranger Black Edition Double Cab 2.2 TDCi 160PS
List price inc VAT £34,495
List price ex VAT £28,796
Volkswagen Amarok 3.0 V6 TDI 163 4Motion Trendline
List price inc VAT £30,455
List price ex VAT £25,430
Yee-hah, cowboy: welcome to What Car?’s Wild West London. But before you kick down the saloon bar doors and order yourself a whiskey, let’s put our pick-up truck stereotypes to one side for a minute.
Once exclusively thought of as the farmer’s vehicle of choice and not much more, this class has come a long way in recent years; in fact, the market is booming.
Why the interest in them? Well, while they are admittedly still a way off the on-road dynamic ability of most mainstream SUVs, the latest pick-ups are better to drive than ever. And if you run one as a company car, you’ll pay a flat rate of benefit-in-kind (BIK) tax that is substantially lower than for most mainstream cars. Leasing rates can be very competitive, too.
So, with ever-improving road manners and wallet-stroking tax breaks, pick-ups can now make a lot of sense to a lot of buyers, and it’s time to take this class seriously.
To find out how they compare, we’ve gathered together every example on sale right now – other than the Isuzu D-Max, which is currently undergoing a facelift – to sort the wheat from the chaff. All eight come in a four-door, dual-cab bodystyle (which is more practical than the single-cab alternative that some offer), and all but one are powered by four-cylinder diesel engines ranging is size from 2.2 to 3.0 litres; the exception is the Volkswagen Amarok, which has a V6. Four-wheel drive is standard in all cases.
It’s high noon – time to saddle up and see which is the best pick-up you can buy in the UK today.
Next: Fiat Fullback and Ford Ranger >
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