Nope, fully manual. It’ll let you bounce off the rev limiter to your heart’s content

Yeah, I’m really glad they said *at least* 200lbs rather than *up to* 200lbs. Big difference there.

I think they meant in Camaros, otherwise they have a major issue because the 1990 Corvette ZR-1 was making 375hp

They were Japan only, to the best of my knowledge. I brought mine straight across from there. I’m in Vancouver, BC.

Not a bad way to describe the difference in purpose, though the PajEvo is still a little truck. It’s built from the body-on-frame Pajero/Delica/Challenger/Strada chassis.

From land rover, I guess yeah. I feel like the RRS would run into trouble going fast offroad as well, more of an overland or fast vehicle. I think the closest to the PajEvo from any manufacturer would be the Ford Raptor or the Bowler EXR.

Sure. If you want to rock crawl and overland, get a defender. If you want to do anything high speed, get a PajEvo. It’s pretty cut and dry :). I’ll be honest, the pajero has not a lot of rock crawling ability. But the defender prooobably can’t take sweet jumps as well. It’s all about what you want to do with it.

Nope. RHD only for sure, and to the best of my knowledge sold in Japan only.

Ha, I’m sure your Rover can haul itself over much larger rocks without damaging a fancy widebody kit though :). I use General Grabber AT/2s, I’m actually surprised how well they’ve served me.

On-road handling is better than you would think with all-terrain tires. If you just turn in the front washes wide pretty quick because of the weight transfer to the front. But if you get on the power to push weight to the back it’s got pretty decent grip. The weird part is the little bit of delay between turning the…

Cheers, yeah I’m the David Williams. I put a comment in here, but I’m trapped in the grey still. Totally willing to answer any questions about it though.

But actually kind of nice to have for slow speed off-roading without killing the clutch. The key is that it has the reasonably aggressive manual shift mode that is fully manual and fairly quick.

The automatic is handy for any slow speed stuff, which they do have to spend some time doing in the Dakar. Saves on killing clutches.

Yeah, there’s a reason the Pajero was sold as the Montero in North America and the Shogun in Europe... I imagine it wouldn’t have sold super well otherwise.

Yeah, parts are quite expensive. Like I said, I had the alternator on mine go out and a replacement was quoted at $1300CAD. Luckily I was able to get it repaired.

They’re all RHD, so it’s actually two passenger side mirrors ;)

Like I said, they did make some manual ones, but they had a tendency to break. The manual mode on the INVESC-II isn’t as good as a real manual, obviously, but it’s quick enough I don’t miss it too much on a rally stage.

Oh, and I noticed you didn’t give a lot of details about the engine, so if anyone is curious, the 6G74 in these was built from the regular 3.5L V6 block, but with forged rods, a MIVEC head, and a variable length intake manifold.

It makes me happy too, it would be real expensive for me to fix if I did!

Hey folks, I’m the David Williams from the article (excellent work Raph). Here’s a photo of me from the Thunderbird Rally 2014: