2014 MITSUBISHI MIRAGE DRIVERS
2014 MITSUBISHI MIRAGE LICENSE

Mitsubishi claims 44 highway mpg, and maybe you'll get that at a steady 60 mph with all the speed-up-slow-down-speed-up-again antics of I-5 in the Central Valley and my attempt to maintain a decent average speed, I managed a calculated 39.1 mpg between Glendale and Santa Nella. The Mirage was startlingly pleasant and comfortable cruising at high speeds, the wind noise wasn't bad at all, and the CVT always seemed willing to coax some more passing power from the 1,193cc MIVEC three.

2014 MITSUBISHI MIRAGE DRIVERS

For a time, I felt that everything that happened between I-5 drives was a strange dream, to be evaluated only during the drive.īecause California drivers are so bad - combining aggression with an utter lack of attentiveness - and I-5 between the state's two major urban areas is so crowded, you can't set the cruise control and relax instead, you need to be ready to dodge a scrap refrigerator dropped from a modern-day Joad Family's F-150 running on space-saver spares, then glue the pedal to the floor to pass a miles-long parade of 18-wheelers going 54 mph.

2014 MITSUBISHI MIRAGE LICENSE

I've done this drive in clapped-out 1960s Detroit beaters with no mufflers, no side glass, and no license plates, I've done it in flaky British Leyland products with smoldering electrical systems, and I've done it in 21st-century luxury sedans.

For nearly a year, I did the round trip every weekend. There was a time, from about 1985 through 1993, when two months never passed without my driving Interstate 5 between the Los Angeles and San Francisco regions. This trip in, say, a '75 Honda Civic or a '90 Toyota Tercel EZ or an '03 Kia Rio, becomes something of an endurance test you turn up the scratchy AM radio to drown out the wind noise and struggle to pass 18-wheelers.īut this is 2014 and even inexpensive cars are pretty good these days, right? Let's find out by making the drive in Mitsubishi's least expensive North American offering:ĭrivetrain: 1.2 liter I-3, FWD, continuously variable transmission Having done far more than my share of marathon road trips in cheap little cars over the last three decades, I decided it would be interesting to take Mitsubishi's latest on my most-traveled long-haul drive: Los Angeles to Oakland via Interstate 5.

We took a look at the 2014 Mitsubishi Mirage a few months back, and judged the brand's new city car to be a perfectly competent - but unexciting - cheap-but-honest commuter.

2014 mitsubishi mirage