If the weather in your area condemns the Corvette to the garage for half the year, there’s something to be said for continuing to satisfy your Driving Enthusiast desires with an all-wheel drive turbocharged rally car for the street. Although Subaru is just now getting back into the game with its all-new WRX, Mitsubishi has continued to offer the Evo to fans who like their performance rude and crude and turbocharged to within one psi of meltdown: i.e. guys under 30. The biggest benefit in our eyes is that one of the best all-wheel drive systems in a car under $40k is standard and gives the Evo the traction needed to laugh in Old Man Winter’s face. Unfortunately, you’ve got to be a hardcore breed to look past the Mad Mitsu’s glaring shortcomings, but we’re still glad we’ve got the choice to get in touch with our inner hooligan and drift around our own personal rally stage. Snow be damned.
This wasn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, that an AT editor was called in for chauffeur duty. And while the 2007 Mitsubishi Outlander did not quite fit the part of a limo, the AT garage was fresh out of Audis. But a bit of elbow grease and some window paint, and this wagon was the Chariot of Love! Yes, I’ll be the first to admit I uttered the words “aw cute!” but I blame it on the atmosphere of the day.
The 2006 Mitsubishi Raider was identical to the Dodge Dakota in everyway except form, yet it always struggled to carve out a niche for itself. Nevertheless it did carve its way off the beaten path pretty well, and stood up to the rigors of the fall corn harvest.
During its tenure in the AT garage we proved that while the stiffly sprung and high strung 2008 Mitsubishi Lancer EVO GSR makes for a great backroad bomber, it isn’t so well suited for multi-state cross country excursions.
600 Miles Later We Learn What The Evo Isn’t Good At
I’ve had better and I’ve had worse. Among the worse was a three-hour cross-country van trip through Mexico in a 20-year-old van. A trip like that will make you appreciate things like suspensions, air conditioning and even the Michigan DOT. Recently I embarked on a road trip that didn’t jar loose all the fillings from my teeth but did take a toll on the overall condition of my already weakened body. Read more…
Top Down Fun…For Some
Nine times out of 10, convertibles do not make a good primary car. By their very nature they are a compromise; from wiggly windshields with the top down to Buick-blocking blind spots with the top up. Their trunks are small, their prices are big, and unless you live in the Southwest your year is marred with weather you’d rather tackle in anything but a convertible. After a few days in a 2007 Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder we can tell you it suffers from all of these compromises and more, but it looks so good you might not care. Read more…
The Auto For Outings
This is a motivated little SUV for sure. The driving point behind the Outlander is its desire to meet the needs of those driven individuals who need more than just basic transportation. With the blurred lines the crossover designation has created it is little wonder that the Mitsubishi Web site calls the Outlander both an SUV and a crossover. I prefer to call it a cute-ute for a number of reasons, one of which I will get to at the end of our story. A case of mistaken identity? I shall have to ponder on this a while. Read more…
At Least It Looks The Part
To most people that is. Maybe it’s the old age, maybe it’s the lack of coffee, or maybe it is the fact that this is the base model, but whatever the case was, the Eclipse did not impress me as I had hoped. That does not mean that the Eclipse is not worth your attention, on the contrary, I am convinced the Eclipse is a player. The visual appeal is there, but the substance simply lacks. Read more…
Hoping To Raid The Midsize Truck Market
“Sure thing, drop it off, gotta go!” I exclaim to the Mitsubishi PR guy as quickly as I can while trying to hammer out the final details of an important business meeting as I am walking into it with two colleagues.
“What was that all about?” one colleague inquires.
“We get a Mitsu Raider for the weekend, so if we…” Read more…
Something MoRe
It’s probably appropriate that the high-performance version of Mitsubishi’s Lancer sedan is called the Evolution. Every couple years the die-hard speed junkies inside the three-diamond division tweak the look, and if we’re lucky, the turbo engine of this all-wheel drive monster and add one to the Roman numerals. Right now we’re flying around corners in the ninth version of the entry-level sedan cum serious sports car. Of course, when we think it can’t get any better the Evo will evolve again, and we’ll be blown away—again. Sadly, the 10th generation is still a ways off, but in the meantime the Evo IX is more than capable of serious entertainment. To be sure we were as amused as we could be we asked for the top dog MR edition. We haven’t had this much fun since the office Christmas party. Read more…
Categories: Reviews Tags: 2006, All-wheel drive, AWD, compact, Evo, Evolution, IX, Lancer, Mitsubishi, MR, sedan, turbocharged
