2021 Mirage are here!

[MetroMPG]

When you test drive a Mirage, you ask yourself if this is something I can live with?

When I test drove a Mirage, I asked myself if I was worthy.

50% more power than I'm used to!

LOOK AT ALL THESE #*$&% AMENITIES! Ooo, what does THIS button do??

Rides like a Cadillac!

It ruined me. I 'll never be able to go back to driving 1990's $#!^boxes now.

[Mark]

When I test drove a Mirage, I asked myself if I was worthy.

50% more power than I'm used to!

LOOK AT ALL THESE #*$&% AMENITIES! Ooo, what does THIS button do??

Rides like a Cadillac!

It ruined me. I 'll never be able to go back to driving 1990's $#!^boxes now.

Sorry if I offended anyone. My opinion of the vehicles from the past is different. Just prior to the 1990's, we paid off our student loans, save 20% for a 1st home down payment, & bought/paid off two affordable small cars. My wife wanted to be an at home mom when our first daughter was born in 1990, & it meant our income was going to be cut in half for the next 8 years. She returned to teaching when our second daughter started school.

Our 1990 Ford Festiva & 1989 Plymouth Colt Wagon DL got us through the 1990's with no payments or expensive car repairs. I had a hitch on the Colt, and it did a decent job of towing my 4'x8' trailer for years. These two cars served our young family quite well, & I wouldn't consider either car as sh--boxes then or now.

I have never owned a Cadillac, but I hated the ride of my Dad's large Buicks in that time period. I would rather my Mirage handle more like a VW Golf than a Cadillac, but that's personal preference.

The Mirage is a very nice car when priced right. I go back & forth between my 2017 Mirage and my 2011 Subaru Forester. I never lose sight of the fact that the Mirage is a cheap little economy car, which does what it's designed to do quite well.

Maybe your Mirage has more buttons than mine?

I have zero buttons on the steering wheel of my 2017 Mirage. Outside of the traction control & Bluetooth (added feature on lower dash) my 2017 Mirage doesn't have any more buttons than my former 1989 Plymouth Wagon DL (which was entirely a Mitsubishi vehicle, too).

[MetroMPG]

Your '89 had power mirrors?

My Firefly (Metro) is so bare bones (how bare bones is it!?), it doesn't even have a switch on the passenger door jamb to turn on the dome light. There's a blank where it should be.

I feel like we're in that Monty Python sketch. "We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank... LUXURY!"

[Mark]

Your '89 had power mirrors?

My Firefly (Metro) is so bare bones (how bare bones is it!?), it doesn't even have a switch on the passenger door jamb to turn on the dome light. There's a blank where it should be.

I feel like we're in that Monty Python sketch. "We lived for three months in a paper bag in a septic tank... LUXURY!"

I don't remember if the mirrors were power or not? They may have been manual adjustment from the inside? The Festiva was very bare bones with no passenger mirror. It would have save you the time of removing it.

This is a nice review of 1989 Colt Wagon DL below. In all honesty, for a 75 hp small wagon it seemed more powerful than my current Mirage. I would slide a custom cut piece of plywood between the split rear seats, and our English Springer Spaniel would get a third of the rear for long trips. Two adults, two kids, & a dog were common for us back then. If we had lots of luggage, I would use luggage rack on top. I don't remember the car ever feeling under powered, & I did tow with it quite often. For whatever reason, the Mirage doesn't seem as substantial or as powerful? At the same time, I paid less for a brand new 2017 Mirage than I did for 1989 Colt Wagon DL, & that says something! I know that I am comparing a small wagon to a small hatchback, but I appreciate the value of the Mirage, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22kO1yIhnE4

Like the clip below shows, the car handled quite well, & it had excellent brakes. We're also taking about pre-air bag vehicles. It wouldn't win any vehicle beauty contest today, but they were good little cars. I'm not hesitant to buy a Mitsubishi today, because of that car. For the time, it was a good little car. I don't think of them as sh--boxes. They were affordable vehicles that allowed me to direct my money to more important things in life like kids, home, hunting land, graduate degrees, etc....

Vehicle are money pits, & I like those with shallow ones!

I know some harp on the few horsepower of the Mirage, but I owned 3 vehicles (1978 Honda Civic Wagon, 1989 Colt Wagon, & 1990 Festiva) with less. With a manual transmission, I never felt any of them were underpowered.

I think you & I appreciate the same things about the Mirage. Compared to a 1990 Festiva, the extra features of a Mirage make it seem like a luxury hatchback. It's a nice car for the money. I wouldn't pay anything near MSRP for one, but owning a discounted one has been great. It's been fun owning a small 3-cylinder car, & that's a first for me.

[PityOnU]

Someone was posting memes earlier about having the same conversation over and over w.r.t. cars, and it's true. To summarize:

- If all you need a car to do is be a protective metal bubble to get you from point A to point B as cheaply and reliably as possible, the Mirage cannot be beat. It's as simple as that.

- Most people, however, have emotional needs that their car needs to fulfill, which are just as legitimate and important as practical ones. Do you want to have a mega plush interior? Show off to your friends? Have way more power than is required for street use? That's totally fine. No need to feel Christian guilt over it. You will pay more, though.

- Advances in manufacturing and electronics means that now you can get more for less than you could in the past. Reducing trim levels simplifies manufacturing and keeps costs down. Computerization is actually cheaper/simpler than mechanical controls now. Etc., etc. $5.3K in 1990 == $10.8K today.

- Driving a base model, manual Mirage means you have big PP

Feel free to copy/paste this in the future.

[7milesout]

That video above makes me want a Dodge Colt 5 speed station wagon (new). I wonder if there are any leftover...

When my wife was in high school, she had a Dodge Colt E (4 speed manual) I think it was a 2 door hatch. I never knew it was such a performance vehicle.

[Clessy]

That video above makes me want a Dodge Colt 5 speed station wagon (new). I wonder if there are any leftover...

When my wife was in high school, she had a Dodge Colt E (4 speed manual) I think it was a 2 door hatch. I never knew it was such a performance vehicle.

Drive nothing but your mirage for a month and anything you get into afterwords feels like a performance vehicle.

[Fummins]

Drive nothing but your mirage for a month and anything you get into afterwords feels like a performance vehicle.

Can confirm.

[klroger]

Drive nothing but your mirage for a month and anything you get into afterwords feels like a performance vehicle.

My other car is a 1966 VW Beetle. A screaming 48HP Yes, my Mirage IS a performance vehicle

[Subcompact Culture]

A 1990 economy car (1.3L, 63 hp, 5-speed) that I drove until 2004 didn't have -

Power window
Remote power lock/unlock
Power steering
Intermittent wipers
A/C
cabin air filter
cruise control
tachometer
ABS/traction/stability control
factory radio/speakers/antenna
air bags
TPMS
4-doors
14" wheels (had 12")
plastic door trim (had metal with a patch of padded vinyl)

I can't speak for how a 1990's Metro was furnished, but a base level Festiva (Mazda design, KIA built, Ford sold) didn't have any of the above features. I did add a radio/speakers/antenna, & I would have liked cruise. Outside of that, none of the missing features really mattered. I appreciated being able to purchase the car for $5,300 brand new. Adding features & cost would have made the car less appealing.

I looked up how much $5,300 was back in 1990, and it's about $10,644 today—a bit less than the price of the Mirage these days (give or take). Those of us old enough to remember "economy cars" from the 1980s and 1990s (such as Mark and me) know that a modern Mirage (and other inexpensive cars these days, such as the Spark, Versa) is pretty much loaded. But these days people expect tons of features and "stripped down" models rarely exist. I think some people don't know what a stripped-down car is really like. We had an '86 Colt growing up. It was complete with 12" tires, burn-your-legs-in-the-summer maroon vinyl interior, a leaky aftermarket sunroof, barely functional aftermarket A/C (no, it didn't come with it), and cardboard doorcards. Heck, my 1995 Suzuki Sidekick had no A/C, no cruise, cardboard interior door panels, etc. Bare bones. There are very few bare-bones cars anymore.

Then again, buyer expectations change. Some might consider a vehicle without a touch-screen infotanment system "bare bones," or a car that doesn't have keyless entry as "poverty spec." My '17 Mirage is the newest car I own by 10 years. I've never owned a car with a touch screen. I've never had adaptive cruise control or lane keeping. Heck the Mirage is the first car I've had with USB!

Maybe I'm falling behind the times with new-car tech (or at least owning new car tech). I don't pine for it, however.