SSANGYONG’S facelifted Rexton four-wheel drive wagon arrived halfway through last year completing the Korean brand’s refreshed four-vehicle local line-up.

The model went on sale in Australia in 2003 and this heavily revised version, known as the Rexton W, made its debut at the 2012 Busan motor show in South Korea.

A technology sharing agreement with Mercedes-Benz allowed SsangYong to base its Rexton on the first-generation ML-Class platform and to this day it retains much of those underpinnings and is still a body-on-frame SUV.

While SsangYong has not yet experienced the same success in Australia as fellow Korean brands Hyundai and Kia, it says that a major investment by Indian car-maker Mahindra & Mahindra which purchased a 70 per cent stake in 2011 will spur an improvement in products and the size of the dealer network.

The SX seven-seater all-wheel drive diesel is the only variant on sale in Australia and we lived with it for a week to see how it stacked up to a mix of urban daily duties plus a weekend getaway.