11 Apr 07
Until the middle of last week I would have said that life with the L200 had been uneventful. But suddenly, on the way to collect my Mercedes coupe from Castle Combe, the engine management light came on, accompanied by a dramatic loss of power as the engine went into get-you-home emergency mode.
I briefly glanced under the bonnet but couldn't see anything amiss. Switching off and then on again reset things and power returned but the engine light continued to burn so I put a call into Mitsubishi.
The next afternoon a man turned up with a manual two-door Warrior L200 for me to use while the Elegance was being looked at. It has fewer lardy luxuries and a manual gearbox, and the absence of the shiny roof bar and glitzy wheels made it better looking in my eyes too. I enjoyed driving it, but it felt a lot more like the essentially commercial vehicle it is.
Anyway we had the Elegance back with us within 24 hours. The diagnosis? The engine management system had detected turbo overboost and protected the engine by shutting the power off. No harm done.
The kids like it, Catherine likes it and - uniquely - seems more capable of parking it well than me. I tend to lose the sense of its length. The long cargo deck has another downside in that things that slide to the back are not easily reached.
