In With The New
by David Finlay (02 May 07)

Until recently, if you had asked me to recommend a pickup, I would have mumbled for a few minutes and eventually come up with a list of possible candidates which almost certainly wouldn't have included the Isuzu Rodeo. Now that I've driven the 2007 version, I think I may have to introduce it to the calculations.

It's not so much that the old Rodeo was a bad car (which is just as well, because the new one is mechanically very similar). It was just that I couldn't possibly see myself spending any significant amount of time in something which - as mentioned in our launch report - had the ride quality of a Space Hopper.

Pickups have become really quite civilised over the last few years, and even with the improvements the Rodeo still isn't class-leading in this respect. But at least I now feel in control over it, and the risk of my breakfast paying a return visit every time I take to the road has gone from Red Alert to Negligible.

Apart from the suspension work that has made this possible, the new Rodeo also benefits from a certain amount of restyling (principally at the front) and a new 2.5-litre turbo diesel engine which, with a maximum of 134bhp, is more powerful than either the 2.5- or the three-litre units it replaces.

Actually, the performance benefits are marginal, and I doubt anyone would notice much difference between the old and new models. There's enough power to be getting on with, and lots of grunt at very low engine speeds, and that's all that matters. Perhaps more importantly, the new 2.5 is almost exactly as economical as the old one, and significantly more so (4.2mpg on the combined cycle) than the 3.0 was.

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