2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Test Drive

I know I probably shouldn’t judge a car just from a test drive, but I can’t resist, given that its a brand new model and no one has written a review on it yet, who knows – it might actually help someone.

When my boyfriend said he wanted to buy a new car and pretty much left it to me to choose, I didn’t really consider Mitsubishi at all at first. Then one day I was driving out of the Walmart parking lot and saw a car that looked really cool and my first thought was “I wonder if Alfa Romeo is back on the American market?”. I had to drive around and follow the car to figure out what it was, which to my great surprise turned out to be the 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer. As soon as I got home I went on the Mitsubishi website to research it. I must say it: based on hype and specifications it somehow immediately went to the front of the line of my candidate cars.

To be fair, as usual the most important thing was its looks, I know I am shallow it’s terrible. But beyond that everything sounded really promising – Made in Japan – unlike most Japanese brands the Lancer is supposedly still made there; warranty that was even better than Hyundai’s – 5/60000 bumper-to-bumper, 10/100000 power train, BUT lifetime unlimited miles roadside assistance. The next thing that caught my eye was the very reasonably priced Blue Tooth phone integration option, which was only about $200 installed by the dealer. Add to that the already very tempting price and it looked like a real winner.

Now my boyfriend had never even heard the name Mitsubishi (not that it means anything) so it took some really hard negotiating and a little calculation to even get him to agree to test drive it (when we went out on our test drive run I just so made it that the Mitsubishi dealership was the very first one we saw).

I think the base models start at around 13000 but the one we drove was the step up ES with CVT, which was about $15000 still a very reasonable price for a new car. It comes with a 2.0 4 cyl engine, which turns out is the same as the base Accord and Sonata. Similarities, however, end right there. As soon as we got in the car I knew it was too good to be true. With every car we tested my first task was getting in the back seat to check out the space there since we often take long trips with friends. I am about 5'11" tall and sitting back there my head was touching the ceiling without really stretching or anything. The next thing I noticed was that the felt on the ceiling was kind of hanging down so I pushed it a little bit and it gave in. I checked almost the entire car and everywhere there was a gap between the felt (or whatever it is called) and the ceiling. The salesman saw me doing it and quickly explained that was a new odor absorbing “feature”. He might be right about it, who knows. Needless to say every next car we drove I was touching up the ceiling to check out for that new feature, but luckily didn’t find it on any other car.

He also saw my head brushing the roof while I was sitting there and he said that was another “feature” of the Lancer - “theater sitting” - supposedly to prevent motion sickness and creating the illusion of openness by raising the back seats, but again I don’t understand how do you get an illusion of openness when your head is hitting the roof.
Anyways, I gracefully allowed him to take advantage of the theater seating on the back and moved to the front passenger seat. Things weren’t much better there either. The front seats were very small with a short sitting area so when you’re a passenger you can’t really …what’s the word? Slouch? On it too much…the fabric used on them was rough and cheap looking and there was not a whole lot of cushioning. Overall the seats alone were enough to turn me off from the car before we had even started the engine.

Then the engine started and things got even worse. The motor sounded loud and coarse, and created and unusual amount of vibrations for a brand new car. The sound was worst at take off, which I think was assisted by the CVT transmission. Together the engine and CVT didn’t work very well, hesitating a lot at initial acceleration and making a loud whining sound. The ride was stiff and unpleasant and the poor seats made things even worse. Every bump on the road was felt and there was plenty of wind noise coming through the front windshield. The air conditioning worked really well (it was 98 degrees that day), but the fans were excessively loud. Everything together contributed to a very noisy interior.

Speaking of the interior, it was in huge contrast with the hot looking exterior. While it might look OK in pictures, when I saw it in person I thought it was the ugliest car interior in a new car I had ever seen. Every plastic part and every surface looked like Walmart ware. A lot of the parts were not aligned very well with plenty of gaps and holes in between and crooked lines in the seeming. Just the whole interior was screaming “I am cheap, leave me alone!”.

Unfortunately our test car didn’t have the Blue Tooth system installed so I couldn’t try that out. I did play briefly with the sound system, nothing special there – single CD with MP3 support, there was an AUX input for an external player, but no satellite radio. There is also a $1500 optional navigation system, but in these days I think it’s a madness to opt for that.

After riding in it I had very little desire to drive it, but the salesman kind of insisted that I drive it to so I did. This was the first time I drove a car with a CVT and was kind of disappointed. There seemed to be just way too much hesitation which made acceleration jerky and loud. We later drove the Ford Fusion with CVT as well – it felt much better, but I must say I liked the traditional automatics in the Honda and especially in the Hyundai so much better. At higher speeds the engine in the Lancer seemed to settle down and got a lot quieter, but then the wind and tire noises would pick up so it never really got quiet (of course the AC fans were helping a lot with the noise).

Now that I think about it, after test driving it, other than the looks of the car there was not a single thing I liked about it.