Mitsubishi Pajero from 1984 with 250 HP in Monaco.
The Mitsubishi Pajero is a full-size SUV (sport utility vehicle) manufactured and marketed globally by Mitsubishi over four generations — introduced in 1981 and discontinued in 2021.
The Pajero has generated more than 3.3 million sales in its 40-year run. The name will live on with the smaller Pajero Sport, which is based on the Mitsubishi Triton/L200/Strada.
Despite the similarity in name, the Pajero Sport share none of the original Pajero’s underpinnings and are smaller in overall size.
Mitsubishi marketed the SUV as the Montero in North America, Spain and Latin America (except for Brazil and Jamaica), due to “pajero” being a derogative term (Masturbator) in Spanish, and as the Shogun (将軍) in the United Kingdom, named after the Japanese word for “General”.
It was discontinued in North America in 2006.
The Pajero, Montero, and Shogun names were used on other, mechanically unrelated models, such as the Pajero Mini kei car, the Pajero Junior and Pajero iO/Pinin mini SUVs, and the Triton-based Pajero/Montero/Shogun Sport mid-size SUVs.
The Pajero is one of four models by Mitsubishi (the others being the Triton, Pajero Sport and the Pajero iO) that share Mitsubishi’s heavy-duty, off-road-oriented Super-Select four-wheel-drive system as opposed to their light-duty Mitsubishi S-AWC all-wheel-drive system.
The nameplate derives from Leopardus pajeros, the Pampas cat.
