Isuzu D-MAX 2020 Tow Test

Choosing the right tow vehicle is a serious decision.

While the latest big US pick-ups like the locally re-engineered and converted RAM and Silverado really do eat smaller Asian designed and built utes for breakfast, they can be more than you need for lunch and dinner unless your caravan is your mobile home.

While the American behemoths are surprisingly comfortable and well appointed, given their pretty basic underpinnings and the towing fuel economy of their big ULP and diesel engines is quite impressive, their ability to slip into car parks and through small regional towns is less so, when unhitched.

Did I mention ‘turning circle’ or the special challenge of negotiating a Macca’s drive-through?

So unless you're using one as a 5th wheeler tug, are constantly on the move, or cart coffins and need all that load bed length for your living, they're probably more truck than you need for the rest of the year.

I’m not pick-up bashing; I feel much the same way about Toyota’s 200-Series Landcruiser and Nissan’s 300kW petrol V8-engined Patrol, which both make great tow vehicles, with the Toyota easily upgraded to tow more than four tonnes. Both are also fabulous Outback cruisers that struggle to remain relevant in the urban environment in which most of their owners do the majority of their driving.

At the other end of the tow vehicle scale, you’ll find predominantly European vehicles that are frankly too precious, too light and too fragile for the task of hauling a relatively heavy off-road caravan down a major Outback Highway, like the Gibb River Road, the Tanami, Strzelecki or Birdsville Tracks.

Best of both worlds

Then there are those in the sweet spot, like Isuzu’s D-Max ute, that are like wiry terriers. Small enough to drive to the shops and tough enough to work for their owners between caravan or adventure holidays and weekends.

With its relatively narrow (1960mm) crew cab body, a payload of 1029kg and a GVM (Gross Vehicle Mass) of 2050kg and an acceptable turning circle of 12.6 metres, the mid-spec D-Max LS-U that we recently took on a hard holiday, ticked all the right spec boxes to make it a 356 days a year work-and-play family member.

We didn’t go the easy way, south on the bitumen from the Gold Coast Hinterland to Memory Cove at the tip of South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula. Nup! Ignoring family protests, we took the more direct, diagonal route, via Goondiwindi, Cunnamulla, Thargomindah, Tibooburra, Broken Hill and Whyalla.

We had hoped to take the Strzelecki Highway via Innamincka and then onto Woomera via Maree, the Oodnadatta Track and Andamooka, however, unexpected (and very welcome) rain in Western Queensland and northern South Australia made solo caravan travel risky on unsealed roads. So instead, we got stuck for a few hours south of the quaint Noccundra Hotel trying to avoid a lake in the middle of the road!

After this punishment, it was no surprise to us that the D-Max recently won the ‘Best Work Ute’ category in a Best LCV Awards. To this I could nominate it for a ‘best value tow tug’ award.

Built for towing

Choosing a vehicle to tow an off-road caravan is a serious business, as once on the road you're dependent on its strength and mechanical ability. I should clarify its ‘rated towing capacity’, as you need to look past the ‘3500kg’ figure that almost every locally-available Asian ute claims to more important figures like its Gross Combination Mass (GCM) which means the total permissible weight of our rig, fully laden with everything onboard, including passengers.

As regular caravancampingsales readers may recall, I engaged Weightcheck Mobile Caravan Weighing to check the real weight of our rig, loaded and ready to travel, when I reviewed an Isuzu MU-X prior to setting off on a trip to the Gulf of Carpentaria and Lawn Hill National Park in August last year.

The result was surprising, with the MU-X coming within 2kg of its permitted GVM when fully fuelled and laden, including myself and my wife and our caravan’s 270kg towball download.

However, as the D-Max has a 100kg higher compliance-plated GVM of 3050kg and a 200kg higher GCM of 5950kg compared with the MU-X’s 2750kg/5750kg, it was clearly more highly rated as a workhorse, which is reflected by Isuzu’s 3500kg braked trailer rating, versus the MU-X’s 3000kg.

That additional toughness in part comes from the D-Max’s basic difference to the MU-X.

While they both share a similar separate, full-length heavy-duty truck chassis and twin wishbone and coil spring independent front suspension, the D-Max employs leaf springs on its solid rear axle compared with the softer coil spring independent set-up of the MU-X, which is more suited to suburban SUV duties.

In theory, this should translate into a choppy rides without a load on board or a caravan on its optional tow bar, but in its most recent incarnation, the D-Max packs a new 3-span leaf spring rear end, developed from Australian customer feedback. Through the use of stronger and lighter materials this new setup is claimed to improves the ride, comfort and handling, without compromising the D-Max’s.

The D-Max has a choppier ride unladen than the MU-X, but it’s far from the ‘rip your shirt out of your pants’ worst of the working utes and quite acceptable for everyday use. Load it up and it rides smoother, without dragging its tail as you night expect with fewer spring leaves.

In fact, the 270kg laden ball load of our caravan held the same height-adjustable Gen-Y drop hitch further off the ground than it did on the MU-X a year earlier and at no stage – even on the very choppy bush track into Memory Cove in South Australia with its load bed full – did if come close to bottoming out.

Refreshed look

While it will take a keen eye to pick it, the exterior of the latest D-MAX has been refreshed with the introduction of 18-inch machined-faced matte black aluminium wheels wrapped in 255/60R18 Toyo Open Country Highway Terrain tyres.

While they work well and provided impressive all-weather grip and good traction, I think standard spec should be ‘LT’ (Light Truck) tyres because of their superior sidewall strength, even at the expense of some ride comfort.

I can’t definitively blame the Toyo’s sidewalls for the rear tyre puncture we suffered half-way along the Birdsville Track from Maree to Birdsville, as it could have resulted from a stone piercing the tread, causing a slow puncture. But stiffer sidewalls might have saved the tyre being shredded so comprehensively between the rim and the stony road.

One thing that truly impressed us though was the excellent dust-proofing of the D-Max’s cabin, which ranks up there as among the best we have experienced on any vehicle of any price.

At the opposite end of the scale, we can rate the dust-sealing of the optional sliding load bed cover as among the worst and it vindicated our decision to keep everything valuable in the cab. Not only did the dust pour in at a prodigious rate, but the crude latch that kept if closed refused to lock on most occasions and finally wouldn’t unlock. I’d have mine with a canopy please!

The other issue with the load bed is that it has no protection for the painted metal surface, which is easily scratched when things bounce about on corrugated roads. A Raptor coating, or a removable bed liner would also be on my wish list, especially on the LS-U model D-Max we reviewed.

Minor issues aside...

Enough grumbles, because in virtually every other aspect, the D-Max was a star.

For a start, it steered really well, laden or empty. Tuned from Australian-customer feedback, the hydraulic steering rack on all current MU-X variants has been retuned to make it smoother and lighter.

Steering inputs at a standstill and at low speeds have been greatly improved—requiring less effort than you would expect from a commercial vehicle, while the steering feedback at medium to high speeds remains as good as ever.

Particularly impressive was the lack of vibration coming back through the column when driving on very poor roads, which is something many SUVs could be better at. Would it have been better or worse with those tougher ‘LT’ tyres I wanted? Can’t tell.

The D-Max’s 3.0-litre, four-cylinder turbo-diesel engine is also impressive. Although rated at only 130kW and with a peak torque of 430Nm, both peak outputs are produced at really useful revs of 3600rpm and between 2000-2200rpm respectively.

True, it’s diesel-normal clatter on start-up is there when accelerating in the lower gears, but once it drops into fifth gear at cruising speed, or overdrive sixth if you’re lucky with a tailwind or the gradient, it’s unexpectedly quiet and the automatic transmission on our LS-U went about its business quietly, selecting the most appropriate gear for optimum economy.

Decent fuel economy

We tried over-riding it in search of even better economy, but it knew better and our overall figure of 16.25L/100km is good considering that more than 1000km of our 5500km trip was spent off the bitumen on everything from well-graded Outback Highways to goat tracks, and many of the on-road kilometres were spent travelling intro a head wind.

The cabin of our LS-U was a comfortable place to travel in, with leather seats, a good trip computer/sat-nav, plenty of cup-holders and oddment storage and enough power outlets to charge our phones, our separate Hema Navigator and a CB radio.

Half the folded back seat was devoted to our 45-litre Waeco portable fridge/freezer, secured to the child-restraint anchor points, while the floor below accommodated our borrowed Enerdrive B-Tec 125AH lithium battery and its companion ePower DC21DC charger that kept its contents frozen when travelling and for days on end when camped.

Even getting in and out of the D-Max, despite its good ground clearance, is easier now, thanks to the new-look sidesteps, constructed from Fibre-Reinforced Polymer (FRP).

Thumbs up for big trips

We didn’t make use of the matte-black pair of roof rails fitted to the D-Max’s cab, nor the matching sports bars in the ute bed for fear their contents might ‘walk’ if we left the ute unattended for a while, but they certainly gave it a purposeful look.

Obviously, a lot of other travellers have thought so too, as we saw many D-Max utes in front of caravans and camper trailers on our travels and it’s easy to understand their popularity that has put them among the top echelon in the annual Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards since 2018.

Spanning 21 variants, with a five-star ANCAP safety rating, a well-matched engine and transmission, good fuel economy, keen retail prices from $26,990 to $54,990, a isx-Year/150,000km warranty and seven-year capped price servicing, the D-Max is a hard act to top.

2020 Isuzu D-Max LS-U

Vehicle type: 4WD Crew-Cab Utility
Engine: 3.0-litre in-line 4 cylinder turbo-diesel
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Power/torque: 130kW /430Nm                                                                                 Fuel economy: average of 16.25l/100km over 5500km trip (mostly towing)
RRP price: $48,700, plus on-road costs.