Ssangyong Musso long-term test: report 2

The Ssangyong Musso has been our favourite budget pick-up for the last two years. But now we're seeing if it's as impressive when you live with it every day...

Published17 August 2020

The car Ssangyong Musso 2.2 Saracen Auto 4WD Run by Oli Kosbab, senior videographer

Why it’s here To discover if a pick-up can really be an alternative to an SUV, and whether this bargain-priced Musso is the best in its class

Needs to Offer masses of storage for video equipment and be a comfortable place to spend time during the many miles that will be racked up travelling from shoot to shoot

Miles 1250 List price £33,831 Target Price NA Price as tested £36,306 Official economy 29.7mpg Test economy 26.0mpg

27 July 2020 – Hard-top hassle

With lockdown starting to ease I’ve had more opportunities to use the Ssangyong Musso for video shoots – fitting in all my equipment without any difficulty – but it’s also come in handy for a few jobs around the house. Moving furniture, that is; it doesn’t do the dishes, unfortunately.

The load bed is simply massive. And on those rare occasions you manage to reach full capacity back there, there’s still loads of room in the rear seats for the overspill. If you’re carrying people instead of stuff then it's all smiles, too; all the passengers I’ve had in the back have been perfectly happy with the amount of head and leg room on offer.

But I recently discovered a problem while using the Musso to take a load of stuff to the tip. You see, the top glass part of the split tailgate has a handle on the inside, and when this is pushed down, it locks the boot. Even if you unlock the car from the outside with the key, the hard-top stays locked. I think you can see where I'm going with this.

I guess it’s in there so you can't get trapped, but on this occasion I’d put so much stuff in that when I closed the tailgate, something pushed the handle down, locking me out of the load area.

And the Musso remained locked for some time. It was only after some last-resort rigorous shaking of the car that, eventually, the offending plank dislodged itself, the handle released, and I could finally drive to the tip. I know I was at least partly to blame, but it’s definitely something I’ll keep in mind when filling up the load area next time.

There is one other problem with the hard-top, though, which certainly isn't my fault. On Musso’s without it, the rear view mirror gives you a clear view out the rear windscreen at the back of the cab and beyond, as you would expect. But with it, you have a lot of extra glass, and so the view in the rear view mirror becomes a mess of reflections and glare.

But still, these are relatively minor quibbles, and I’d much rather have a Musso with the hard-top than without because of the extra security and practicality it brings.

Besides, you do at least get a rear-view camera as standard to help with reversing. My other car is a Ford Fiesta ST, so it’s obviously very different going from a hot hatch like that to this massive pick-up, but I’ve already gotten used to the Musso’s size, thanks largely to the presence of the camera.