Considering a Mitsu Mirage.

[Mark]

I am going to add a few more thought that may or may not be relevant today.

I wanted $9500 new Mirage. That may be a $10,500-11,000 Mirage today? If I financed $10,000 with Ally (Mitsubishi) at the time, I was eligible for $500 rebate. That made the Mirage a $9000 new car for me. I settled on one for $9299 in my first color choice, & it had a couple extras that I already shared. I had to finance the tax, title, & everything ($10,153.73) to get that rebate. I wrote a check for $153.73 the day it was delivered to my home. 3-months later I refinanced it as a used car with my local credit union. Both my credit union & general manager of the dealership suggested doing this My payments were $169/month (2.74% for 60 months), but I just paid the thing off a little over a month ago. It cost me $30 to refinance with my local credit union (interest rate dropped from 4% with Ally to the 2.74%). I didn't even have to visit my own credit union to do this. Emailed my credit union, & it was taken care of on line.

If I had qualified for the current Mitsubishi owner and military veteran rebates, I would have gotten this car for way less than $9000 new. For that price, looking at slightly used Mirages wasn't worth it. Plus, all used ones at that time were the 2014-15 models. In all honesty, some of the slightly used cars were listed higher than the new updated 2017 models at the time.

These are items that drew me to the Mirage. I wanted a reliable economy car, & I didn't want to pay more than $10,000. I had been looking at used cars like the Fit, Yaris, and Mazda2 for quite some time. Once I started looking into the Mirage seriously, everything about it made total sense. I still wouldn't pay a lot of money for a Mirage, but a highly discounted one is a great value in my mind.

Some forum members are a little critical of me when I share all this, but I had no problem finding a cheap Mirage. I didn't negotiate. I went where they were selling for a price I was willing to pay. When they offered to deliver the car for free, the deal was done!

I am just trying to be helpful by sharing my experience with the purchase. I learned some things along the way myself, even though this wasn't my first car purchase.