Greetings from the Philippines!

[Alpha_One]

Hi everyone! I own a green Mirage, GLS trim, manual.

I bought it because:

• It's cheap!
  The Mirage, at least in our market, is great bang-for-the-buck (or the piso, as the case may be). The Suzuki Celerio (aka Suzuki Alto, Maruti A-Star), Kia Picanto and Chevrolet Spark are similarly priced, but they're all smaller and in the case of the latter two use more fuel. The Hyundai Eon and (India-made, Maruti) Suzuki Alto are cheaper, but are a lot smaller.
• It's small!
  The car I rode in as a kid is a 1992 Daihatsu Charade, a cheap, honest-to-goodness, absolutely-no-frills lightweight car powered by a 993cc three banger. My mom currently drives a 2004 Honda Jazz (Fit).
  
  Obviously, my family has a fondness for small cars and we keep them running forever (the Charade's with my dad, but the AC is broken). I hope to keep my Mirage running for the next 10 years or so.
• It's green!
  I mean this both literally and figuratively. It was love at first sight when I saw the green color in person. The car also happens to be the most economical one in its class - 825kg and excellent aero.

I saw this forum on Ecomodder, a site which I lurk on occasion. Looking forward to learning more about our little cars.

[jamiec]

Hi Alpha_One welcome and great to have you join up here.Hope we can all learn more here about these cars.
Thanks for telling us about your car and why you bought it compaired to the other options.

Jamie

[Daox]

Welcome to the site Alpha One, and congrats on the new Mirage!

What are your thoughts on the car, likes and dislikes?

[MetroMPG]

Have to admit I like the green as well - I picked that colour for the Mirage in the forum header.

It's also close to the same green on the Honda Insight I have.

Glad to have you here, Alpha_One. Since you're an EcoModder lurker, you realize I will want to pick your brain about the car's fuel economy!

[MetroMPG]

Such as: can you provide any more info on the official fuel economy rating of the car?

The Mitsu Philippines site says "Achieve an impressive 21 km/L"... but we don't know for sure which model/transmission that refers to, though it seems to be the CVT. http://www.newmirage.ph/economy.html

Do you know of official numbers by model/transmission?

[Alpha_One]

What I like about the car

The big things

• It's ridiculously cheap to run. With gas at around 50 pesos (US$1.25) / liter, and the fuel consumption around at 6.5L/100km, my daily 30km commute comes out to around 100 pesos ($2.50) daily. That's including the insane Manila rush hour traffic. Excluding parking (around $1.50/day), that's as good as taking public transport around here, and Manila's public transport is dirt cheap if stupidly chaotic. Considering that I also carpool (2-3 people including me, sometimes five ), I actually win considerably by taking the car over riding public transport.
• 825 kilograms. You can feel how light it is driving it around. Even the Honda Jazz (aka Fit), weighing at 1000kg, feels like a truck.
• 4.6m turning radius for the LHD version. It's great for navigating those abominably narrow U-turns that the local authorities are very fond of using. This combined with its length (or lack of) makes it very easy to parallel park as well.
• Generous interior space. The car is packaged very well; I'm rather tall for a Filipino (175cm) and even with the front seats moved fully backwards, there's ample space in front of my knees. Trunk space is a little tight, but the GLS also comes with 60/40 rear seats (GLX variant comes with a full-folding rear seat only). Shoulder room is on the narrow side, but acceptable for short trips or if you can put the smallest person in the middle.
• Excellent safety features. The Mirage comes with dual airbags as standard, with the GLS trim adding in ABS with EBD and a three-point seatbelt for the rear middle passenger (he gets a lap belt in the GLX). Even the more expensive cars (such as the Vios aka Yaris Sedan) come only with a driver airbag as standard.
• Like I said in the first post, it's green, literally and figuratively.

The little things

• Big mirrors. A must in navigating Manila's insane rush hour traffic.
• Three cylinders. I grew up to the inline three growl and consider it to be the hallmark of a proper car in the same way that American kids grow up to the sound of a cross plane, odd-firing V8. This is obviously completely subjective but hearing it feels much like having grandma cook lunch.
• Comfortable seats. They're nicer to sit on than they look, and much better than the rock hard seats of the Honda City and Jazz.
• Powerful headlamps with well-designed optics. Driving at night, I noticed that it also throws a column of light towards the kerb; the headlamps have a diffuser that's designed to do exactly that, which is great for night time driving around residential streets.
• Good forward visibility. The A-pillars aren't as thick and sits at a higher angle as some of the other cars (I'm looking at you again, Honda Jazz).
• The Philippine-spec Mirage GLS comes with a different, Chinese made, 2-DIN, touch screen stereo. It has lots of features - bluetooth, iPod and USB connectivity, GPS navigation, video playback and it sounds decent (non-audiophile here). It just happens to be really, really hard to use (more on this later). The Mirage GLX's stereo also has a lot of features - all of the above sans touch screen and GPS.
• The wiper controls have a speed-sensitive, variable intermittent setting and a one-touch mist function. Having both is rare for cars at this price (you usually get one or the other, or most likely just a fixed intermittent setting). It's a total gem if you live in the tropics where it rains, and rains, and rains some more, and rains again for good measure.
• It's a head-turner, apparently. The first two weeks that I got this car, I've gotten a lot of stares from pedestrians and fellow drivers. I had to check, was I driving around in a Ferrari?! Hmmm... perhaps it's the green color.
• And oh, have I mentioned that it's green?

What I dislike about the car

The big things

• Actually, I have only one major complaint about this car: the radio. The touch screen interface is awkward and slow to respond, and being a touch screen you have to look at it in order to operate it. It's distracting to the point that I "set it and forget it" before I drive off lest I risk crashing.

The little things

• No vanity mirror for the passenger side (much to the dismay of my girlfriend)
• No light inside the trunk.
• No handles on the ceiling for the rear passengers.
• The stock horn is pathetic; you'd think they raided the parts bin from a scooter factory! I upgraded the horn immediately after I got the car.
• It's one of the few manual transmission cars where reverse is longer than first gear. That's fine except that I live in a hilly area and my driveway has a steep entrance. I stall the engine about every other time I back into the garage.
• The rear windows are a bit forward than what I like, which makes it rather difficult to see what's coming when you're backing out of a parking space.
• A lot of noise comes in from the rear. I can hear a constant splash from the road spray when it's raining.
• The electric power steering is vague and noisy. It's very light, which is great for parallel parking but not so much when you're throwing the car around the corners. I am not exaggerating (well, only slightly) when I say that my PS3's Logitech Driving Force GT is quieter and gives better feedback!
• Very minor nitpick: I could do without the start/stop button. If you stall the engine, you need to wait for the green light to come on. This takes about three seconds, or five seconds too long before the taxi driver behind you starts honking like mad. If you push the button before the light comes on, the car thinks you're turning off the engine and unlocks the doors.

Overall, I'd say if Colin "Simplify and Add Lightness" Chapman made econoboxes instead of racing cars, he would have come up with something similar to this car.

[Alpha_One]

The Mitsu Philippines site says "Achieve an impressive 21 km/L"... but we don't know for sure which model/transmission that refers to, though it seems to be the CVT. http://www.newmirage.ph/economy.html

Do you know of official numbers by model/transmission?

Locally, Mitsubishi only advertises that one figure. It's supposedly based on the European mixed driving cycle, so perhaps we can go by that when the car comes out in Europe. I've beaten the figure twice (based on MID readings). I often hear of other people beating it as well, manual and CVT users alike.

[MetroMPG]

Wow - excellent summary! Thanks for posting that.

A UK reviewer also complained about the steering: slow to self-center, too many turns lock to lock (so, slow response), and devoid of feedback. The biggest drawback about the car to him.

First mod: horn. Any other plans?

Colin "Simplify and Add Lightness" Chapman

Funny, I've had that quote floating around my brain lately as well while thinking about the new Mirage.

One more question comes to mind about the fuel economy readout in the MID: what does it show? (Trip, tank, instant?) Is it resettable on the fly?

[Alpha_One]

The horn was so crappy that when I test drove that car, the two Mitsubishi salespeople riding with me broke out laughing when I hit the horn button!

No plans for any further mods just yet. Between work and grad school, I haven't got the time. Right now, I'd love to have a light in the trunk.

The MID shows trip average fuel consumption in L/100km (default), km/L, or MPG. It's resettable on the fly. It auto resets after the engine has been off for 5 hours, a feature which can be turned off.

[jamiec]

Thanks for the geart info there Alpha One. I remember reading that the Australian's that went to test drive the Mirage in Thailand
complained about the steering and handeling and said there would be an added anti roll bar fitted to the front and the steering would be recalibrated for Oz delivered cars. As we like our cars to handel well here evan at the expence of some ride quaility. Many car importers have had to redo there suspension specs to avoid mass critisisim here. Hyundai wont sell a car here that the Aussie have not tested and told the home factory what needs to be sorted before they go on sale as they had problems with this before.