Interior… not exactly ‘leading-edge’

Climb into the cabin of the D-MAX and you’ll immediately be struck by the awkwardly styled slab-faced dashboard. Though simply laid-out, the out-of-date and starkly utilitarian styling (that’s a nicer way of saying ugly) is well-short of the benchmarks for the sector.

Here, the Hi-Lux and Triton have the D-Max beaten all-ends-up for the look and feel from behind the wheel.

While ‘ours’ might have been the range-topping LS-U, the old-fashioned dash, ‘pigs-bristle’ style carpet, and drab grey plastic throughout, ain’t gonna win it any design contests.

The down-market and style-less feel to the interior - to be honest – is at odds with the sticker price. (Although the specially-kitted one at the Melbourne Motor Show, with carbon-fibre and leather throughout, looked fat.)

The front seats squabs also fell a bit short of the mark; they’re too small and too soft for taller/larger drivers (6ft+) to get comfortable. The D-MAX is not the only sinner in the front seat department in the dual-purpose ute sector. The ML Triton suffers from a flat and hard front seat squab. The Hi-Lux and Navara are superior here.

But does anyone who buys a bullet-proof ‘worker’ like the D-MAX give a tinker’s cuss about the styling niceties of the interior? I doubt it.

This is a ute that is built for work first and pamper its occupants sixth.

Understand that, and you’ll understand the D-MAX.

The drive… a tad uncompromising

The D-MAX’s 3.0-litre diesel is a willing performer. It’s not the quietest in its class, but it is perfectly acceptable, and frankly, there is nothing wrong with a little diesel clatter - it’s all part of the charm.

It feels under-stressed, completely unfussed (whatever the load) and has the good manners to sip diesel very sparingly.

Isuzu claims that the D-MAX range will return between 7.9 to 9.0l/100km, and our testing across a mix of suburban, highway and light off-road work saw us achieve high 8’s.

The D-MAX is set-up to carry a load and this is reflected in the quality of its ‘around town’ ride. Few competitors in this class manage to combine load-carrying capacity, with a well-mannered ride. The D-MAX is certainly not perfect in this regard.

Low speeds on pock marked bitumen will have the firmly sprung rear-end making its presence felt with a little hopping and skipping and a few clangs from the tailgate. Unladen on the highway, its firm springing induces some front/rear pitch on undulations and secondary roads.

You wouldn’t call it a handful, but it reminds you it wants a load in the back.

Fill it up, as we did, and the suspension tuning then makes sense. While with half a tonne in the back the diesel barely noticed it was there, the ride was transformed. The unladen pitching and nervous highway balance simply disappeared.

This also tells a story of course. It tells you what Isuzu has engineered the D-MAX for… it’s built for graft. Put it to work, and it’s happy.

This suggested, and we were able to confirm, that the D-MAX would likely also be completely at home in the rough stuff.

So, fuelled up, we headed for the bush trails up around Blackwood, to the North-West of Melbourne. The tracks there can be steep, narrow and loose and the D-MAX excelled in this moderately difficult off-road environment.

It offers excellent ground clearance and departure and approach angles for a factory stock 4WD, and the dynamic shortfalls that we experienced on sealed roads, disappeared when the going got rough.

Throttle and brakes are easily modulated over rough ground, and the D-MAX’s diesel just keeps churning away, whatever the gradient. The low-range gearing proved perfectly capable during our travels, providing enough engine braking and hill climbing ability for everything we threw at it.

Here too, in this environment, it feels like it could take anything you could throw at it, and keep coming back for more. We came away pretty impressed with the D-MAX’s off-road capability.