Mitsubishi Pajero

Cabin

The dashboard runs horizontally across the cabin, another detail pulled from the first-generation Pajero. It is built around two 14.3-inch screens joined side by side under one glass panel (Mitsubishi lists a smaller 12.3-inch display on certain specifications).

The instrument screen brings back the old triple-gauge cluster. Something Mitsubishi calls the multi-metre, which now shows altitude, compass heading, and the car's pitch and roll angle alongside the usual speed and fuel readouts. The stitching on the dashboard and door trims borrows from Kimekomi, a traditional Japanese fabric-inlay technique. The Camel interior colour is designed to hide everyday wear while contrasting against black trim elsewhere in the cabin.

Front Seat and Rear Seat

• Seven seats across three rows, with the driver positioned higher than before for a clearer view of the car's size and the ground around it
• Second-row seats slide back and forth by 150 mm and tip forward for easier third-row access
• The third row is built with adult-sized legroom in mind, helped by a footwell that lets passengers tuck their feet under the second-row seats
• Seat ventilation runs across the full seat base and backrest rather than a single strip down the middle

Climate Control

Three-zone automatic climate control lets the front seats and the rear cabin run independent temperatures, stretching through to the third row rather than stopping at the second. Mitsubishi has also fitted acoustic glass to the windscreen and both sets of door windows, alongside extra sound-deadening around the body. This is aimed at letting every row hold a normal conversation at highway speed.

Infotainment

Another key aspect that most buyers are quite interested in. And you get a wireless smartphone-mirroring system that runs through the dual screens for maps, music, and compatible apps. The instrument display cycles through 16 background themes depending on the time of day. The audio comes from a system co-developed with Yamaha, called Dynamic Sound Yamaha Ultimate. It runs with 12 speakers through dual amplifiers that adjust volume and tuning automatically as road noise increases with speed. Mitsubishi Connect adds remote climate control and vehicle status checks from a phone, plus an SOS function linking occupants to an operator in an emergency.

Boot Space

Mitsubishi has not published a boot volume figure for the new Pajero. But given the three-row, seven-seat layout and the size of the body, a competitive number is likely once local specifications are confirmed, but nothing official exists to report yet, and it isn't included here.

Mitsubishi has given the new Pajero a safety list that goes well beyond what's typical for a vehicle built primarily around off-road ability.

• Forward Collision Mitigation with detection for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists, plus Predictive Forward Collision Warning
• Emergency Assist for Pedal Misapplication, designed to catch a sudden, mistaken stab of the accelerator instead of the brake
• Emergency Lane Assist, new to the Pajero, with reading lane markings and nearby traffic to warn the driver and apply steering correction
• Front Cross Traffic Alert for vehicles approaching from either side at junctions
• MI-PILOT, combining adaptive cruise control with lane-centring assistance for long highway stretches
• Eight airbags in total, including a new front-centre airbag designed to stop the driver and front passenger colliding with each other in a side impact
• A 3D Multi Around Monitor built from four cameras, including a view of the ground directly beneath and ahead of the front wheels for picking a line over rocks or a hidden drop

That front-centre airbag is a first for the Pajero nameplate.

Front

The face draws on kendo, the Japanese martial art built around discipline and composure, and comes with a choice of two grille treatments: a horizontal-bar design that leans formal and a honeycomb pattern built around a more technical look. A T-shaped headlight signature ties the two together, giving the new Pajero a front end that reads as related to, but clearly separate from, the model it replaces.

Side Profile

Mitsubishi keeps the tall, slab-sided stance the Pajero has carried since 1982, now stretched to 4,920 mm long on a 2,870 mm wheelbase. The C-pillar borrows its shape from the roll bar fitted to the very first Pajero. This is something a long-time owner is likely to spot immediately. The ground clearance is rated at 230 mm on versions fitted with 20-inch wheels, backed by a 30.4-degree approach angle and a 22.6-degree breakover angle, numbers that matter far more on a rocky trail than they do parked outside a Dubai mall.

Rear

The rear panel carries a hexagonal motif that reinterprets the exposed spare wheel of older Pajeros mounted on their tailgates, a heritage touch rather than a functional one on this generation. Mitsubishi rates the departure angle at 25.8 degrees, rounding out a set of off-road figures that all point toward a car still built to leave the tarmac behind.

Colors

• Armour Copper Metallic
• Phantom Blue Metallic

So far, two exterior colours have been shown. Armour Copper Metallic is a deep, solid bronze meant to play up the body's sculpted surfacing, while Phantom Blue Metallic is a grey-blue finish with gold highlights that shift as the light changes. More colours are likely to follow closer to individual market launches, including the UAE's.

The Super Select 4WD-II offers four settings: rear-wheel drive for everyday economy, full-time four-wheel drive, a locked centre differential mode, and a low-range mode with the centre differential locked for serious off-roading.

S-AWC layers on top of that, bringing the 4WD system, torque control between the left and right wheels, traction control, and the anti-lock brakes together into one system.

The frame itself uses more high-tensile steel than before, which Mitsubishi says cuts weight while adding stiffness, and the suspension pairs an independent double-wishbone front end with a new five-link rigid rear axle tuned to keep the tyres in contact with uneven ground.

We all know the Pajero's history here runs deeper than in most markets it's sold in. More than 100,000 models have been sold to UAE owners since the early 1980s, all of them sold through Al Habtoor Motors, Mitsubishi's distributor in the country for more than four decades.

Its reputation was built partly on the Paris-Dakar Rally, where a Pajero took the outright win in 1985, the first of twelve victories for Mitsubishi in the event, including seven in a row between 2001 and 2007, a run that still stands as a Guinness World Record for consecutive rally wins by one manufacturer.

That history explains why this comeback carries more weight here than in a market seeing the Pajero for the first time.

It built its UAE name as a rugged, comparatively affordable alternative to the Toyota Land Cruiser and Nissan Patrol, and this new model arrives with more technology and a more finished cabin while keeping a proper ladder frame and low-range gearing underneath.

Whether it can still undercut those two on price once it reaches the UAE isn't known yet and won't be until Al Habtoor Motors confirms Gulf-spec trims and pricing, realistically sometime after April 2027.

Anyone waiting for a proper successor to their old Pajero now has a solid reason to keep watching for news, even if the wait isn't over.