Photos courtesy of Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corporation

For a time in the early 2000s up until the mid-2010s, the Mitsubishi Strada was considered a pure urbanite pickup.

A seemingly short bed aft of the cabin, a torquey engine, and a sturdy build made the beast of burden more fit as an urban hauler or occasional minimal cargo out-of-town traveler.

The 2022 Mitsubishi Strada has now gone back to its carry-all origins. The unit currently has a bed that can handle a bevy of agriculture, a maintained tradition of a robust powerplant, and an interior at par with 2020-onwards levels of comfort.

The Strada’s exterior looks like it has taken more of a rugged masculine persona. One example of the posit above is the boxy “chin” in the front area. It can be opined that the front end is similar to the art in the Bruce Timm-penned Justice League cartoon, with lots of pointed ends and square jaws.

The 2022 Mitsubishi Strada's Utility

The bed carries dimensions of 1,520 mm (length) and 1,470 mm (width). That’s significantly longer than the previous generation’s 1,325 mm length and 1,130 mm width. This means a current Strada can carry four to five native Philippine pigs ranging from 1,250 mm to 1,290 mm, compared to the previous generation that could carry just two or three. If you’re in the farm-to-market business, a bed of the abovementioned specs is decent enough to carry items without opening the tailgate.

Mitsubishi Strada Athlete interiors.

Inside the 2022 Mitsubishi Strada

A significant strength of the previous Strada was a carlike cabin, and the current iteration is no different. The seats' hip and leg support has increased and now features double-stitched leather similar to higher-end sport utility vehicles. The top-end Strada Athlete has an eight-way adjustable driver’s seat, suitable for owners of all shapes and sizes. Sound insulation and vibration damping come standard, which is good if one keeps awake blasting tunes from the in-car infotainment (ICI) while avoiding disturbing people around the pickup.

The ICI is decent to good, with a touchscreen feature, MirrorLink capability, satellite navigation, auxiliary input, USB ports, viewing for the reverse gear-activated camera, and Bluetooth connectivity. It would be better if the ICI had Android Auto-Apple CarPlay. Why? The satellite navigation can tap more comprehensive sources of information (like Waze and Google Maps) or more music sources (such as Apple Music).

What's under the hood of the 2022 Mitsubishi Strada?

Lessons from Mitsubishi’s stint in utility vehicle rally racing (such as the Dakar rally) were applied to most of the automaker’s light commercial vehicle roster, the Strada included. An example of the statement above was the powertrain. For example, the 2.4-liter straight four mixed turbocharging, Mitsubishi’s computer box-controlled variable valve timing, and common rail direct injection to move itself, people, and things on any surface without burning a lot of diesel – or sounding like the mill were on its last crankshaft turns.

The 2022 Mitsubishi Strada's off-road prowess

Another example of Dakar rally lessons being applied to Mitsubishi’s production cars is the Strada’s transmission. The 4x4 models can slosh through mud, sand, and even waterlogged places that aren’t deep. This is because the Strada’s four-wheel-drive (4WD) doesn't just have high-range and low-range travel. It has two modes of high-range gearing, great for ease of travel on wet, packed dirt or dry/wet rocky surfaces. The 4WD also has four traction control modes, which use sensors on the wheels to “talk” to the computer box to deliver more twisting effort to any of the four rims. The result of all these off-road aids is that you can bring people and products in a 2022 Mitsubishi Strada almost anywhere, shallow river crossings included.

A little segue here - it is reportedly the Strada’s off-road ability that made it one of the official utility vehicles of the Philippine government’s Department of Education (DepEd). One of the mandates of the DepEd is to deliver school supplies to far-flung areas of the country. Given that muddy roads and virtual moats (read: river pathways) surround most Philippine educational institutions, having a “travel almost anywhere” pickup to haul learning stuff from the capital region to the provinces certainly helps.

Safety is a priority with the 2022 Mitsubishi Strada

Mitsubishi is mindful that one can easily get carried away with trying to wring out all 181 ps and 430 Nm from the engine. Thus, several electronic cops come standard. These include:

• Anti-lock braking
• Deceleration distribution to all four wheels
• Parking sensors
• Reverse gear-activated camera (with viewing via the ICI)
• Traction control
• Automatic high beams from the headlights
• Sensors for the seven airbags
• Added engine braking on descents
• Hill hold function that keeps the pickup stationary on inclines
• Blind spot-sudden lane movement warning system
• Stability control sensors when the utility runner is towing something
• Added braking when the front bumper detects an imminent collision or when the unit suddenly accelerates

With the lattermost safety doodad, it brings to mind the sudden unintended acceleration (SUA) issues of the pickup’s 2008-2015 Montero Sport sibling – and that Mitsubishi addressed that SUA niggle in the Strada platform.

Lest one forget, the Strada line also has a base model that’s a purely business, cab-and-chassis variant. One can turn the back end of this pickup into an open bed, a light-carrying steel box (with airconditioning option), or put people in a rectangular enclosure like a public utility jeep. It’s just like its L300 sibling, frankly. However, with the base model Strada, you will have to outsource your business hauling requirements to a third party instead of asking Mitsubishi to make a custom enclosure.

Which variant of the 2022 Mitsubishi Strada should you get?

Price-wise, the Strada’s range of purchase options is in a ballpark of Php 815,000 (base model, cab-and-chassis) to Php 1.818 million (Strada Athlete 4x4 Black, automatic transmission or AT). Arguably the sweet spot in the lineup would be the Php 1.487 million Strada Athlete AT in two-wheel drive and the Php 1.522 million Strada GLS 4x4 manual transmission (MT). The former can be posited as the best unit for solely tooling around town since it has rear bumper-incorporated parking sensors. On the other hand, the Strada GLS 4x4 MT can be presented as the best unit for frequent out-of-town, metric ton-hauling capacity. Plus, the variant is navigation-ready and has cruise control for long Philippine expressway jaunts.
What do you like most about the 2022 Mitsubishi Strada?

Read more: Why the Mitsubishi L300 is Here to Stay