I'll put my $0.02 in on the downward turn of this thread. These Mirage's are not Chevy Cobalts. I'd be guessing there was a lot of, "yeah, that's good enough" going on in the engineering and management in that car's development. I've been around a lot of cars, and I mean brand new production cars in my time. I've judged, stickered, and worked on problem resolution and design improvement to many of them. With that said, it took a concerted engineering effort to produce a car that is THIS effective at what it is.

It was conceived, developed, and produced to be inexpensive yet effective. And it damn sure hits the mark. I'm betting Toyota has torn the Mirage down to the asphalted body. And I would not be surprised if Toyota had a lot of positive feedback (internally) of the car as it was torn down. I'm a Toyota guy through and through, and an anti-Hyundia-Kia guy through and through. I have been most pleasantly surprised with the effectiveness of the Mirage. A car doesn't get this effective at this price without a shi1ton of development effort put into it.

A Hyundai-Kia car is actually a Toyota vehicle reengineered by morons, with parts supplied by buffoons. Nice guys personally, but morons for engineers. Those are the facts. They're decent because Hyundia-Kia cars started out as Toyotas.