When you work in the retail side of the car industry, visiting your manufacturer’s head office is sort of like Vegas. What happens there stays there. In other words, cameras aren’t usually welcome and discussions aren’t repeated. Fortunately for our readers this week, The Garage cameras were allowed to take some shots of a bit of a rare beast. Rare here in North America at least.

Car manufacturers often send vehicles around the world to test the waters and see if a particular model might work in a different market. To this end, Mitsubishi has a few vehicles from abroad in use around the Toronto area, like this 2007 L200 Triton.

While we didn’t get to drive it, we did poke around a bit and one thing is clear. Mitsubishi needs to bring this truck to Canada now, diesel and all. It has a unique look that will set it apart from other trucks on the market. At 4995 mm in overall length, it is about 9 inches shorter than a Nissan Frontier. That extra length would appear to be due to the shorter box and interior space hasn’t been compromised. With the rounded cut at the rear of the cab, I suspected the rear seat to be for kids only, but we managed to load 2 250+ pounders back there with no problems.

Power comes from a 3.5L V6 diesel.

This particular truck is a European market unit, where the bumper regulations are a bit different than here. Notice the additional steel tube bumper in behind the cosmetic step bumper.

While the bed is shorter than some of the larger trucks, how many 4 door pick ups carry more than groceries?

The retractable rear window is a nice touch.

So what do you think folks? Should Mitsubishi bring the Triton to North America?