It’s lava at first sight taking this pumped ute through an ancient volcanic debris field.

Isuzu D-Max X-Terrain

Price: $75,490

Powertrain and economy: 3.0-litre turbo-diesel four-cylinder, 140kW/450Nm, 6-speed automatic, 4WD, combined economy 8.0L/100km, CO2 208g/km.

Vital statistics: 5265mm long, 1870mm wide, 1790mm high, 3125mm wheelbase, 18-inch alloy wheels.

We like: Comfortable ride, easy 4WD operation, nice exterior looks.

We don’t like: Some safety spec a little intrusive, price seems high.

AT 2518 metres, Mount Taranaki is the imposing presence in its namesake province … yet it used to be significantly taller still.

What cut the conical mountain down to modern size was what is known as a volcanic debris avalanche, a truly cataclysmic event when it occurred.

At least 7.5 cubic kilometres – yes, kilometres – of debris crashed off Taranaki Maunga’s north-western slopes, covering up to 250 square kilometres of land with material up to 30 metres deep. All the way to the coastline.

Experts estimate the Pungarehu Formation occurred 100,000 years after mountain was formed. So, about 22,500 years ago.

Today it is easy to spot evidence of this dramatic occasion. Drive west from New Plymouth along what is known as Surf Highway 45 and once you get past the little township of Okato there they are … hundreds of strange little conical hills strewn throughout the western Taranaki landscape, from the mountain’s base to the sea.

They are everywhere. Someone once said they are a gigantic example of what happens if you spill a pot of vegetable soup – once the water drains away, you are left with all the bits of vegetable.

The event occurred well before any human habitation of Taranaki. Once people did begin to populate the area, they began to make good use of the strange formations.

Maori discovered they were ideal locations for strategic fortifications and pa sites. During the New Zealand Wars, between 1840 and 1870, the European militia established stockades and forts atop of them. The modified summits of many of the hillocks easily show where they were once located.

Today the land is dairying country. Once again residents are making good use of the little hills. They’re great spots on which to site household water reservoirs, even houses. The famous Cape Egmont lighthouse is atop one of them. There’s even a golf course among the hills, with holes skirting the bases of some of the little mounds.

It’s fun to drive through the area, too. All the roads skirt round and through the hillocks – never over them of course, because they are far too steep for a road to climb. But a local Lions club does organise fundraising four-wheel-drive tours up and down some of hills, and they are popular.

One other thing: The very fact that massive volcanic debris avalanche made it all the way to the western Taranaki coast, helped create the perfect environment for world-class surf. Today, all along the coastline there are notable surf breaks that curve around rocky points, and they attract board riders from all over the world. Hence why the state highway that runs around coastal Taranaki is called Surf Highway 45.

For this journey into the very centre of the debris field, I used a vehicle with a suitable name; Isuzu’s latest D-Max in its flagship X-Terrain specification. The very same vehicle editor Richard Bosselman drove in a back-to-back test with its Mazda doppelganger, the BT-50 Limited.

(You can find that story here: https://www.motoringnz.com/tested/2021/2/5/isuzu-d-max-mazda-bt-50-new-world-order).

My drive was subsequent to Richard’s. I found the D-Max to be one seriously good ute, a solid combination of sports utility comfort and road manners – almost – and four-wheel-drive ruggedness.

Of course just like every other one-tonne ute on the Kiwi market this model continues with a live rear axle with leaf springs setup, and our particular model was shod with aftermarket all-terrain tyres, so the ride and handling sometimes got a little lumpy on Taranaki’s rural roads.

All of those roads are tarmac by the way, which is one of the benefits of the region having a dairy industry that requires big tankers to visit every farm almost every day to pick up the product. And an upside of that is that this part of Taranaki is the perfect location for top-class tarmac rallying. But more about that another day.

First stop on our drive was Stent Rd with its road end that overlooks a famous point break along a rocky shore. The surf wasn’t really working for our visit, with half a dozen board riders trying to catch a few smallish waves. But Stent Rd is massively popular; so much so that the road sign at its entrance got pinched so regularly that the name is now painted on a piece of volcanic debris – a very large rock.

Taranaki’s coastline is almost 100 percent rocky, with just a few sandy beaches, and no surprises then that it has been the scene of more than 200 ship groundings and wrecks. With that as background, no surprises also that there’s a working lighthouse on top of one of the debris field’s hillocks at Cape Egmont, the region’s western-most point.

This structure has in interesting history. It’s made of steel and was made in London, England. It was originally erected on Mana Island near Wellington in the mid-1860s, but it caused a few maritime accidents when it was confused with another lighthouse, at Pencarrow Head. So it was dismantled and transported to Cape Egmont, where it has been shining its light since 1881.

Actually there are two lighthouses in the area. The other is a three quarters-sized replica and doesn’t perform practical function. It’s actually part of a maritime museum that outlines the history of the actual lighthouse, 4km away. A special feature is that it houses the Fresnil prismatic light that was removed from the bone fide Cape Egmont structure when it was automated in 1986. Visitors can make it work with a gold coin donation.

Both places are easy enough to get to. You simply wend your way down roads that lead you between the little conical hills to the coastline, and there they are. And once you are there, you are dramatically reminded once again that the Taranaki coast is extremely rocky and rugged. Some of the access ways along the coast are unsealed, but the D-Max handled it, its ability to drop into four-wheel-drive ‘high’ while on the move providing additional handling security.

If the ute had encountered any areas of soft sand and got into any danger of becoming stuck, the D-Max also offers a low range, and there’s plenty of low-down grunt via an improved 3.0-litre four cylinder turbo diesel.

This unit is the latest iteration of Isuzu’s famous J-Series diesel engine, which is one of the world’s most popular diesels. This time around it has undergone various internal improvements that have added 10kW of power and 20Nm of torque.

The engine now offers 140kW of power and 450Nm of torque, with that torque available from 1600rpm to 2600rpm. It is mated to a six-speed automatic. It’s nice, offering relaxed motoring on the seal, with the potential to handle more down and dirty work if required.

Which, frankly, it wasn’t required to do. I would have loved to have had the opportunity to have a go at getting to the top of some of those strange little hillocks. I once tried in another brand’s ute, but it was shod with road tyres and I couldn’t get there.

So for this little adventure we stuck to the rural roads, many of which are not much more than a one vehicle-width ribbon of tarmac. In that regard we appreciated the truth of Isuzu’s claim that the new D-Max is the safest ute on the market.

It carries more than 20 passive and active safety technologies that range from automatic emergency braking to cruise control with stop/go, traffic sign recognition and blind spot monitoring, hill descent control to trailer sway control. Some of it, particularly the lane departure warning, is a little intrusive in that it tugs at the steering wheel whenever it judges the ute is starting to wander off line, but you do get used to it.

But I decided I would much rather have all this safety specification than not, particularly when cruising through the fascinating remnants of Taranaki’s massive volcanic debris avalanche, on roads that feature plenty of blind corners and hills as they snake around and through all those little conical hills.