When I bought my first gen1 Monty it was 6 years old and my second one was 11 years old. I've often wished I could buy a new gen1 style Monty and wondered what it would be like to have driven one of these off the showroom floor. Anybody have that awesome experience?

When I bought my 1990 4dr 3.0L, I really liked the rig, with one exception. It was a well-built and heavy vehicle with a small engine. Performance was fine with a light load. It was geared low, and off-road running in low-range always provided plenty of power. Freeway running was a different story. Running into the wind with the vehicle loaded was miserable. Towing anything was a joke. The Gen I Montero was under-powered as a hiway vehicle, and it had poor economy. I recently installed a new engine thinking that the lack of performance was due to an old engine. All I got was the same under-powered 3.0L v6 SOHC with poor performance and bad mileage. Back to the future. I just test drove a new 2002 Montero. This one has the 3.5L engine. It is the same story. Wimpy engine with little performance and poor gas economy. Better performance than the Gen I, but way short of what it should be in power and economy.

Spike Mylan