One of the great pleasures in car reviewing is when you’re given the opportunity to really lay into something. To tear it to shreds, to, criticise the very tarmacadam it rolls on. We all relish the chance to deliver a proper slating whenever it is deserved.

It wasn’t long ago that cars from the Pacific Rim would, more often than not, provide ample opportunity to really scratch that critical itch. To dig in deep and pour scorn over every little sub-par detail. Many auto reviews of the ’90s read just like that; a veritable roll call of inadequacies and insufficiencies, and invariably reading almost exactly the same from Kia to Hyundai to Perodua to Proton…

….To Ssangyong. As you all know, the standards of cars from the above named companies have been skyrocketing in recent years, but surely, surely a product from Ssangyong, they of the Musso and the unforgivably ugly Rodius would do me the service of honouring that tradition? Would it? Read on.

Let’s start with the name and what it signifies. Firstly; Korando. Let’s not get confused with the old, Jeep inspired Korando of the ’90s, it just turns out that the Ssangyong brand of today, post-Daewoo, just REALLY like that name and decided to have another go at using it.

This time around the car onto whose arse the nametag has been slapped is actually quite a good one. Korando the second, in normal form, is an utterly conventional medium Sports Utility Ve-hickle which bears no resemblance to any previous Ssangyong, or Jeep product for that matter. The Korando is selling well, comfortably undercutting some of its European, Japanese and American rivals while being equally adept at the usual duties it is asked to perform, those mainly comprising the towing of caravans and looking impressive while parked outside modest properties as finance interest piles up.

This version here is the Sport EXT version, and it’s channelling the brainwaves of the Lincoln Blackwood and Cadillac Escalade EXT, a format that has never translated particularly well this side of the Atlantic. However, with hundreds of misguided folk wobbling around on UK roads in double-cab Mitsubishi L200s, Nissan Navaras and the like, this machine suddenly seems quite sensible.

I’m going to look at the driving experience first, because that was the bit that I was looking forward to picking holes in the most. Ssangyongs of yore have usually packed ex-Mercedes engines from various points in evolutionary history, which generally made for dependability and some kind of basic refinement. This time, though, Ssangyong have gone for their own, proprietary two-litre diesel engine design. And surprisingly, and slightly annoyingly, it’s a good’un.

It’s quiet on startup, either through inbuilt careful design or a good deal of sound insulation, but in fact it remains quite well suppressed from tickover to peak power. It feels just like any other mainstream diesel of modern-ish technology. It’s plenty grunty, too, with 155HP and 360 NM of twist from low down to the mid three grand mark it’s entirely sufficient. All this perfectly OK-ness takes me to the next point in my driving notes.

That point is the handling, which came as an almighty surprise. In fact, that it should have any kind of roadholding at all would be quite encouraging, but the fact of the matter is that the Sport EXT actually tracks around Millbrook’s hill route with commendable accuracy. And safety. And comfort. And here’s the bit that really came as a shock; fun.

You see, underneath the Korando sits no separate chassis like you’d find under so many traditional pickmeup trucks. This machine is of unitary construction, which usually results in the suspension arms and struts being rather more intimate location than you’d see on a body-on-frame design. In fact, this machine takes things one step further away from pickup convention, in that it employs not a live rear axle on either coil or semi-elliptic springs, but a multilink set-up. The result is that the whole plot seems very securely tied down to the road.

The rear end of the operation follows the front obediently enough; sharp direction changes don’t bring up any real issues and the brakes are easily man enough to scrub off the velocities that are reached so surprisingly promptly. The steering feel hasn’t lodged itself in my memory, so lets just say it’s either not there at all or rather uninteresting in its content, but it certainly didn’t stand out as having anything wrong with it. In fact, as I fairly threw the truck around the circuit, I began to imagine how life would be if I were to use it to carry a bunch of stuff on a long road trip somewhere.

The driving position isn’t the best, my seat could do with being able to move backwards a little further but it’s not really fair for me to criticise that, me being a hideous beast man with legs that could support one of the roads between the Florida Keys. It did give rise to a knee/steering wheel/gearstick interface though, the likes of which I hadn’t experienced in quite a while. Other than that, the seats themselves were comfortable enough without being spectacularly well contoured.

The actual interior plastics are of the same sort of grade as those you might find in the cab of an expensive agricultural tractor. Not pretty, not rewarding to be surrounded by, but will very probably last forever and shrug off years of neglect and abuse. There is a slight smell of petrochemically sourced materials, but there are worse smells in existence. And, if we’re honest, it’ll be those aromas you might associate with farming that will probably come to permeate the cabin of the EXT more than any others.

The predecessor to the EXT, the Ssangyong Musso Sport came to be quite well loved by the farming community, who would use it on the fields as well as on the road, to, for existence, fling a much-loved sheep into the load bed and whisk it off to a vetinarian, or throw in a hay bale or two for transport to the stables. However, with the clever new rear suspension system of the new truck, axle articulation seems a little limited, so maybe the Korando Sport is a vehicle more suited to the pursuit of “dirty” leisure activities. Anyone for watersports?

The only thing about the truck that I simply couldn’t get on with at all was the fiddly Kenwood navitainment unit,  with its tiny buttons and impenetrable operating system. It’s not really a fair criticism, Ssangyong can’t be expected to develop their own proprietary system and the feature count is high with Garmin GPS, DAB radio and Dolby Digital sound on its roster, but without practice it’s just not nice to use, particularly so at arms reach while driving. As it stands, on any journey where I need navigational help I will continue to use my phone, even if there’s a navigation system on board already.

Overall, there’s a lot to like about the Korando Sport. Firstly, the Ssangyong emblem has a pair of antlers on it, and that’s cool. It’s practical, with a big, useful, secure covered load bed which is totally separate from the cabin, it has exterior styling which sticks to the not-quite-right design ethos that Ssangyong have always employed, but is certainly not embarrassing to look at. It has no apologies to make over what it is.

Most impressively, it rides and drives well and is powered by a nice, modern engine rather than one that sounds like the kind of unit one might unearth on an archaeological dig. All told this car weighed in at £22,745, highly competitive when viewed against its commercial-vehicle derived rivals and well worth consideration.

I’m just really disappointed at not being able to find more wrong with it.