You'd think a full-sized working pick-up truck weighing in at almost two tonnes and standing as tall as a fairly tall chap would be something of a wallowing hippo on the road, wouldn't you? Well that's not the case with Isuzu's latest offering.I've been test driving a D-Max Utah, the top of the range of D-Max pickups with comfortable seats for up to five people, a big payload area and a fistful of add-ons that give it almost a car-like interior. But rather than being a strong and steady plodder, you can actually chuck it about on the back lanes almost like a road car.D-Max takes up where Isuzu's last workhorse, the Rodeo, left off - or rather it takes up the story a lot further down the road from where the Rodeo stopped, because although the Rodeo was a popular farm-and-forest load-lugger, it had fallen way behind similar offerings from Ford, Mitsubishi and Toyota. For instance it had an appalling two-star Euro NCAP crash rating for passenger protection. But now, it's right out at the front.All of the nine versions of the D-Max come with the same engine, a 2.5-litre twin-turbo diesel that has 161bhp on tap, and can draw on a deep well of up to 295lb/ft of torque. It's rated to pull a braked trailer weighing up to 3.5 tonnes and yet it has a top speed of just over 120mph, though it would take a brave wheel-wrestler to take it there.Not many manufacturers publish acceleration times for working trucks, and Isuzu sees no need to break with that tradition of silence, but it toes tell us that manual-transmission versions like this one have an official average fuel consumption of 38.2mpg. According to the onboard trip computer, I've been getting 33.6mpg over these past few days, which happens to be the official figure for the automatic.Although the D-Max is quite rightly marketed as a range of hard-working 4x4 cargo carriers, the Utah version is kitted out with the sort of things you'd normally expect in your family SUV.For a start, the selection of two-wheel drive, four-wheel drive and low-ratio crawler gears is done through a shiny silver knob that you turn to select the combination you want. 4WD can be engaged while you're on the go too.The Utah has comfortable brown leather seats, a premium sound system, cruise control, ISOFIX mounting points for a child seat, heated front seats, dial-a-temperature climate control, electronic adjustment of the driver's seat and parking distance sensors. It's all you would ever need in a family car. It even has four stars from Euro NCAP. Better still, it has a five-year/120,000-mile guarantee.When I first saw the pictures of the D-Max, I thought it had a facial expression like one of the grimacing and ferocious old samurai in the paintings of blood-stained battles from the 1800s. Now I've seen it in the flesh, I still think it has that look.In a time when Japanese pickups seem more corpulent than ever before, the D-Max looks more square and muscular than most, though a stickler for aesthetic proportions might call for slightly bigger wheels to better balance the acreage of metal on the flanks.It feels like a big vehicle to drive, even if you're used to a large SUV. It's 17 feet long from nose to tail and the turning circle is over 40 feet. It should be tricky to manoeuvre, but if the gap you're wanting to park in or reverse through is big enough, the D-Max is easy to coax in.You can see every corner of the vehicle from the driving seat and the mirrors are large. Those reversing sensors are reassuring too. What I would like are brighter reversing lights. Manoeuvring in the dark showed they have a painfully weak glimmer.All that size seems to disappear when you're on the go. The suspension works well at preventing anything approaching an alarming level of roll in the quick corners, and the steering is firm and accurate. The gearstick needs treating with boldness and vigour but if you can avoid accidentally locating reverse when you're grasping for gears one or two, you'll have no trouble with it.As with all pickups, when the D-Max is in 2WD, it suffers a little from the lack of weight over the driven wheels at the back, so you can find it scrabbling on wet hill-starts, fast junction getaways or in the muck. Luckily 4WD is no more than a knob's turn away.There is one piece of kit I'd actually pay money to have taken off and unceremoniously dumped in a skip. The side-step which is standard on this car and the Yukon version might help a very small or disabled person get in, but it's a positive menace in getting out for anyone.It's not wide enough to get more than your heel on it, but it's too wide to step over without polishing off the accumulations of road-dirt with the back of your leg.The bottom line is though that this is a solidly made vehicle with a manufacturer's guarantee to back it up. The engine has power and torque enough to make mountains into molehills and there's pulling power in all six gears in the manual box.The fuel consumption isn't quite good enough to tempt anyone away from an SUV, and the operation of all the controls is definitely "commercial vehicle", but if you want to combine home- and mud-work in a single vehicle, the D-Max demands consideration, if you can get over the £26,000-plus VAT-inclusive price tag. Engine 2500cc, 4 cylinders Power 161bhp Transmission 6-speed manual Fuel/CO2 38.2mpg / 194g/km Price £20,974 plus VAT Details correct at publication date
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