Jessica: The retro appeal of the Shogun is rather charming.

However, there’s nothing up to date about the Shogun’s fuel consumption compared to modern SUVs.

This week on trips to the gym and to view Grayson Perry’s Exhibition in Bath it was well below 30mpg. A Land Rover Discovery is 37mpg by comparison and much more comfortable and refined.

You have got to hand it to the big Mitsubishi though, it looks every inch the modern workhorse from the outside.

There is no stopping you pulling heavy horses or any other weighty cargo depending on your profession or passion, as the tow capacity exceeds that of its rivals.

So to sum up, if you are a horse-loving, retro-living person who has no cares about fuel bills, prefers the bumpy track to the open road, you will love this car.

For those with more contemporary ideas on modern motoring, shop around. There are plenty of rivals to suit your budget and fashion outlook.

Jessica: In some respects the retro Shogun is right on fashion trend for 2016 – mainly because it’s channeling a groovy 70s vibe.

Even the interior has an enormous automatic gear shift that puts you right back into the big buttons and knobs era.

So driving the Mitsubishi is a chance to turn back the clock. You can cruise down the highway listening to 70s disco, steering a large fuel guzzling car, relaxing your suede flares in those big comfy seats.

Just watch those flares on the running board though. It’s easy to end up with a mud stripe across the back of your trousers.  Not the best impression to carry away from your parked Shogun on the Kings Road…

Expect a flood of new SUVs in 2016 as manufacturers from Jaguar to Rolls-Royce launch four-wheel drive models to tap into our yearning for multi purpose vehicles.

I’m starting to wonder what the next fad will be – or have we exhausted all possible configurations for new types of car?

For those of us without a family, it’s sometimes difficult to get your head around the need for an SUV – who needs seven seats when a rasping two-seater is more than enough.

Fortunately, the Shogun was never designed to be a ‘lifestyle’ machine. It was always a serious off-road machine for people who don’t mind getting the floor carpet dirty.

I wonder if we will be able to say that about any SUV in five years time? Even the next generation Land Rover looks like it was designed for the high street rather than a farmyard…

The Shogun has become the poor man’s alternative to a Land Rover Discovery. That’s on-road and possibly off – depending on how serious you are about trashing a £40k vehicle.

There used to be a time when the Shogun was king but it’s been left behind on-road by the likes of the BMW X5, the Volvo XC90 and many others.

Yes it has a whopping towing capacity but that’s not enough of a selling point to tempt buyers confronted by a forecourt of alternatives.

The ride is ponderous and bouncy, engine noise from the rumbling engine is intrusive and it’s thirsty too.

Console yourself with the amount of standard equipment and cabin space. Oh and that towing capacity of 3,500kgs (a Toyota Land Cruiser is 2,800kgs).

Mitsubishi would cringe if I were to compare the Shogun with last week’s Range Rover. Apart from the whopping price difference, they are aimed at very different markets.

You aren’t going to use the Shogun as an urban-mobile – and say what you like, I’ve rarely seen a Range Rover towing a horsebox in the Cotswolds with serious mud on its wheels.

Our top spec SG4 Mitsubishi is capable of being a competent, semi-luxury machine and the Range Rover is brilliant in the mud. But that isn’t what people buy them for.

So, we have two 4x4s that are polar opposites. And I like it that way. The Shogun sounds and feels positively agricultural by comparison but like my friend says, it does what it says on the tin…

I anticipated that the navigation unit in the Shogun might be ‘tricky’ and I was right. I don’t believe you shouldn’t have to use the handbook to navigate your own way through the system – even the first time you use it. It should be intuitive and user friendly.

Unfortunately, the Mitsubishi requires a lot of scrolling through assorted menus. Today I had three people in the car, a variety of generations from 20s to 50s. First it wasn’t clear how you access the navigation menu itself – not helped by a button saying ‘navigation menu’ which actually guides the user to the navigation settings.

All we wanted to do was input a destination. The key was a button with a tiny flag symbol. It should be simple from here, or so I thought. Unfortunately it wasn’t and it was the 25-year-old who naturally cracked the code, looking on from the back seat.

The navigations screen on the Shogun is large and angled slightly upwards. That means that with the panoramic sunroof open, the reflection renders it totally useless. Thank heavens for the iPhone – at least we found our way home…