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 (rear for the Toyota and 4 x 4 in the case of the Mitsubishi). The first one has a Toyota-engineered powertrain under the hood, a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 144hp unit, while the other one gets its power and torque from a 4-cylinder, 16-valves 139hp engine designed by Mitsubishi.

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, but it doesn't do much to help us decide between the two.

Manufacturers have been building their reliability reputation for decades now and, generally speaking, it appears that Toyota does have a slight advantage, when all the models are taken into account. These are the official statistics, while our visitors describe reliability of Toyota, as well as Mitsubishi, with the same average rating of 4.6 out of 5. The same official information place Hilux as average reliability-wise, and L200 is more or less at the same level.Above it all, drivers of cars with the same engine as Hilux 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. In case you have two minutes to spare I invite you to define your needs, desires and budget and see which car would be chosen by the virtual adviser™, among more than 12.000 different ones in our database.