This review of the new 2014 Mitsubishi Mirage is the best car review I’ve read in a month of Sundays. I had to check to make sure it wasn’t out of Car & Driver, because it reads just like their reviews during their snarky peak. Example quote:
The reborn Mitsubishi Mirage lowers expectations, strangles them and buries their remains in a deep unmarked grave. If this car wasn’t disappointing, it wouldn’t be anything at all.
I know it’s probably not a fair opinion on my part because the Mirage is for developing markets and cuts corners by necessity to keep the price tag low, but I am pretty glad now that I didn’t buy that Mitsubishi Outlander I had my eyes on.
Buy a decent used pre-CAFE car, and spend half the cost of a new car to make it pristine.
Buy a good turbo equipped vehicle, and then spend a little money to up the power.
Don’t know what the current best choices are. In the 90’s, the Talon/Eclipse AWD made about 200hp stock. A few thousand dollars and some wrench time could give you a streetable 400-800 hp at the -wheels-. The most was around 1100 hp, but driveline breakage became common when it got to the 4 figure hp mark.
One of the best handling street cars I drove was the mid-90’s RX-7. Someone in SF swapped in an alum block 427 into one (craigslist+car mag). Probably doesn’t handle as good as a stocker, but the original twin turbo rotary only had 225 hp.
I loved my 2008 Outlander, until we had to fix something and wait almost a week for the part to come in.
$16K includes a whole lot of government mandated “features”.
Truth.
I’d be all over a car that didn’t need to comply with BS government safety regs and CAFE standards. Hell, I’d pay extra for a higher power to weight ratio, just to piss off the SJWs
Wow. They did not sugar coat their dislike for this disappointing exercise by Mitsubishi engineers. I don’t understand how 16k became a starter point.
And for about about the same amount or marginally more, you can get something fun to drive that’s not a dangerous misery or you can get a second hand for less.
Fail to see the market niche.
Oh well … not as bad a name as the Charade … but both apparently pretend to be cars.