Toyota Fortuner Pricing and Specs

These two vehicles share a lot of traits both in terms of their engineering and their target market. Both are aimed at the high-end of the mid-sized off-road station-wagon market and both do a pretty good job of offering lots of off-road ability along with the sort of luxury and convenience that many families want. In the case of design and engineering they are both based on utilities (the Mitsubishi Triton and Toyota HiLux respectively) and share the drivelines and front structure with those utes. To make them work as passenger rather than load-carrying vehicles, both the Pajero Sport and Fortuner do away with the utilities’ leaf-sprung rear axle and replace it a coil-sprung unit for greatly enhanced comfort.

Both vehicles have had their niggling reliability problems, mainly to do with DPF and some EGR problems, but overall, they’re both now old enough for the majority of the bugs to have been ironed out. Perhaps the biggest packaging difference is that the Pajero Sport is a good deal narrower across the cabin than the Toyota, and that matters for families with bigger kids. Both vehicles were facelifted late last year with new tech and mechanical and performance improvements. Both also have seven seats as standard.

The Mitsubishi is about $4000 cheaper based on RRP than the Toyota, but the final price can vary from dealer to dealer and what state you live in. The best advice is to try each one on for size and maybe even throw in contenders like the Ford Everest as a direct comparison.

When Toyota launched the facelifted HiLux late last year, much was made of the fact that consumer concerns had been noted and that the DPF problems experienced by many owners had been addressed. The problem is that until these new versions of the HiLux have done their share of kilometres, we won’t be in a position to know for sure whether Toyota has, indeed, cured the problem.

Meantime, it remains that unless your driving habits include a 30-minute drive at highway speeds every two or three weeks, a modern turbo-diesel with a DPF may not be the best choice. It is worth noting, though, that HiLuxes (and Prados and Fortuners) built after June 2018 have been fitted with a manual regeneration function for the DPF which means the driver can manually force a DPF burn-off without waiting for the car to do so itself. Toyota has also announced that the worst affected versions of the HiLux will now be covered by an extended, 10-year warranty on any DPF issues going forward. More information can be found here.

As far as we know, the V6 turbo-diesel widely tipped to power the next LandCruiser (the 300 Series) is still just a maybe for the HiLux range. And even if it did make it into the HiLux, it would almost certainly be restricted to a sporty GR badged version as Toyota leverages its Dakar rally experience into a marketing role. With that in mind, the V6 would be an unlikely starter for the Fortuner which is aimed much more closely at families and, for whom, seating capacity and running costs are far more important than the ability to get to 100km/h in a hurry.

Even then, there’s plenty of historical evidence to suggest that a V6 turbo-diesel HiLux will remain just an idea (a nice one, though). Toyota has never really taken the opportunity to share engines between its HiLux and full sized (ie: Not the Prado) LandCruiser ranges. With a couple of notable exceptions (all of them petrol-powered) the HiLux has remained a four-cylinder vehicle throughout its life. And when Toyota did build a (petrol) supercharged V6 HiLux tagged the TRD back in 2008, it was a sales flop.

In any case, a hot-rod Fortuner is probably not on the cards despite the HiLux and Fortuner sharing a lot of engineering and componentry.