2017 BMW 520d vs 2022 Isuzu NLR

What's the difference?

Eco-friendly vehicles are the leather pants of the new-car world; it takes a lot of money to make them look good (but people who own them think they look fantastic regardless). If you don't have a gazillion dollars to drop on a Tesla,  then it's a one-way ticket to Prius town. And really, who wants that? 

But what if it didn't have to be that way? Behold the BMW 530e iPerformance.

Seemingly tired of waiting for the Australian Government to introduce any sort of meaningful subsidy for green cars, BMW has made the choice simple: you can have a petrol-powered 530i for $108,900, or opt for the plug-in hybrid 530e for... $108,900. This is truly revelatory thinking.

There's no specification penalty, either, and the hybrid will power to 100km/h in an identical 6.2 seconds, so you're not even any slower. But you are sipping less fuel, emitting less C02 and basking in the general smugness, and sweet silence, that comes with feeling like you're saving the world.

So what's the catch?

For many tradies and mobile service providers, a single cab one-tonne ute in cab-chassis form is a versatile platform that can be equipped to suit virtually any task, from off-the-shelf drop-side trays to complete custom-made canopies and service bodies.

However, utes of this size typically have payload ratings of 1.0 to 1.3 tonnes and a sizeable chunk of that can be eaten up by the combined weight of a tray/service body and essential accessories like ladder racks, tow-bars etc. And that can leave you with a much smaller payload than you need for your tools of trade and materials.

Isuzu offers a convenient ‘turn key’ alternative with its compact N-Series range. This well-designed package comes with its sleeves rolled up ready for work, equipped with a versatile service body and big GVM and GCM ratings that leave one-tonne utes in the shade. And it can be driven using a normal car licence. We recently put one to the test.