Phil Weeden
We were recently invited by SsangYong to an off-road experience at Grange Farm near Wansford. As it was a mere stone’s throw from our Peterborough office and the sun was shining, it was easy to bust out of the office for the afternoon and play on an off-road course. The South Korean carmaker has reinvented itself of late and boasts a range of good value 4x4s: Korando, Rexton and Rodius, with the Korando Sports pick-up (featured in this month’s Pick-up Of The Year test, page 46).
I drove over in the company pool Nissan Qashqai; this has proven thus far to be a fabulous car. The Brit-built Qashqai is good on fuel, supremely comfortable, refined, spacious, well built and has the reassurance of all-wheel drive when the weather turns nasty. The reason I drove over in the Nissan was also so that I could have a benchmark against which to test the SsangYong Korando SUV. The recent TV campaign boasts proudly of how much better value it is against its rivals, including the Nissan. Our top-spec n-tec model now retails at around £24k. The Korando SX model we tested is similarly well equipped (bar the satnav) for just £18,795.
You can read more about this vehicle in the January 2013 issue of 4×4 Magazine – available here
