I personally love utes. I’ve had various makes and types in my shed for more than twenty-five years and in fact, one of the best utes I’ve seen is one that Australian golfer Stuart Appleby (a good country boy from Cohuna in Victoria) built with some mates in 2006, which he then took on the ‘Mt Buller Sprint’ tarmac rally, and having seen it there, I can tell you it was quick.

As this Street Machine article explains, it’s a weapon of a ute that started life as a BMW M5 road car:

Pro golfer Stuart Appelby’s custom-built 2003 E30 BMW M5 ute – Street Machine

So consequently, I love it that much to the disgust of many hardened journalists and motoring purists, the dual cab ute is still this country’s most popular form of new car purchase. Yes, the Toyota HiLux is again Australia’s top-selling new car, a title it’s held for the last five years. In fact, the 4×4 Dual Cab ute now accounts for more than 20 percent of all new vehicles sold annually in Australia.

So, I guess it’s not surprising that some of the most popular stories for motoring news outlets is when they annually pit the utes against each other to judge what they believe to be the best 4×4 Dual Cab Ute of the year, and in their eyes, it’s not always that the highest selling vehicle is necessarily the best.

Recently they rounded up the top seven selling utes and put them head-to-head; the Toyota HiLux, Ford Ranger, Mitsubishi Triton, Isuzu D-Max, Mazda BT-50, Nissan Navara and GWM ute.

With the prices ranging from $45,490 (plus on-road costs) for the GWM Ute Cannon-X to the most expensive, $66,390 (plus-on road costs) for the Mazda BT50 SP, all the cars have similar payloads are around the $60,000 purchase price.

So, this is how Carsales rated their top seven 4×4 utes for 2022:

Best Dual-Cab 4×4 Ute 2022: The verdict – carsales

It’s interesting to note that most other media outlets with similar judging criteria came up with a similar result to the Carsales verdict.