Two significantly similar cars, no doubt about that. Still, each one has something different to offer. Having both cars powered by petrol engines and utilizing the 4-door truck body style within the same 'SUV' segment, the only major difference here really is their wheel drive configuration (4 x 4 for the Mitsubishi and rear in the case of the Toyota). The first one has a Mitsubishi-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 139hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 144hp engine designed by Toyota.

Unfortunatelly, neither of the two vehicles was submitted to the European New Car Assessment Programme (Euro NCAP) testing. This makes it virtually impossible for me to pick one over the other and I'm generally against buying such cars as the safety should really always come first. That aside, let's consider some other aspects which affect safety. Both vehicles belong to the suv segment, which is generally a very good thing safety-wise, still it doesn't help us solve our dilemma, does it?

Reliability is not the best thing to consider on the make level, but it is worth mentioning that Toyota does have a slight advantage, at least on all of the models level. That's the official data, while our visitors describe reliability of Mitsubishi, as well as Toyota, with the same average rating of 4.6 out of 5. Some independent research have also placed L200 as average reliability-wise, and Hilux is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as L200 rank it on average as 3.0 out of 5, exactly the same as the other one.

There's not enough data for me to elaborate on the subject, I'm affraid.

Toyota appears just a bit more reliable, although the difference is truly marginal. The most important thing when deciding between any two vehicles should always be safety, both passive and active. In this case though, it seems that both cars show similar levels of passenger protection all together, so that won't break a tie. When it comes to performance, both vehicles provide similar experience, so I wouldn't point any of them out. Fuel consumption is more or less the same. It's really tough to make a final decision here, but if I'd need to, I'd say Toyota. In any case that's my personal view, built upon all the data available to me. What should decide here though is the way you feel about the two vehicles, and I hope you'll find my guidelines useful in the process. Also, you could use the oportunity to find out which car, everything taken into account, would be the perfect choice for you in the eyes of the virtual adviser™, out of 12.000+ vehicles we currently have in our database.