I recently sold my '92 Eclipse GSX and bought a BMW 328. I was very sorry to see the Eclipse go but I wanted something that felt newer and that I could trust more.

The Eclipse has many extremely good qualities. First, it's fast. There's obvious turbo lag, but after a second or two--WHOOSH. I think it pulls much harder than my BMW in 5th gear, once the turbo spools up. There's some torque steer, but not too much (because of the AWD), and I think it makes the ride more exciting. Sort of a "hold on!" feeling.

Second, the handling is great. When looking for a replacement for my Eclipse, I test-drove a number of newer Honda Preludes, and I thought they would handle better because they won the Car and Driver "best handling for under $30k" award a few years ago, but I was very disappointed. My Eclipse had much higher cornering limits than the Prelude. The cars have similar tires and weigh almost the same, but the Prelude would plow and squeal through turns that my Eclipse had no problem with. Probably a lot of that has to do with the AWD.

The AWD is very reassuring in the rain and snow. I drove the car during two winters in Colorado and only lost traction (with street tires) in a couple of extreme cases. I could always drive out of parking lots, even with 6 inches of new snow.

The Eclipse's highway manners are great. The ride is very smooth and the cabin is very quiet at high speeds. I think it's as quiet as my BMW's. There's more engine noise, but less wind noise. One complaint I have about the Eclipse's ride is with its chassis rigidity. You can really feel the body twist and flex when going over bumps (manhole covers, etc). I don't think it's any worse than most other early-90s cars, though.

Visibility in the Eclipse is not very good, but otherwise, the driving environment is better than the Prelude's or BMW's. The seats are much more comfortable. The bolstering is in exactly the right places with exactly the right firmness for me. (I'm 6'1, 180 lbs.) Headroom is great; I was literally scraping my head in the Prelude but I had at least a couple of inches of headroom in the Eclipse. Legroom in the Eclipse is great. I could move my legs several inches to the left and right so it was no problem finding a comfortable position when driving cross-country with the cruise control on. I like the cockpit-style dashboard and use of soft plastics and cloth for most of the interior.

The Eclipse, being a hatchback, has a ton of room in the back when the seats are folded down. The trunk lip is very high, though, so loading and unloading big things isn't easy. On models with AWD, the spare tire protrudes into the trunk space, which makes storage a little awkward.

I think the '90-'94 Eclipse still looks good. It was praised as sleek and futuristic when it came out and most people who saw my car guessed it was a late-90's model and were very surprised when they found out it was a '92. Saturn stole (and still uses) the early Eclipse body style for their coupes.

The back seats are almost unusable, but I can't understand why people would complain about them. If you want a car with big back seats, buy a car with big back seats. Don't buy a car with tiny back seats and then complain about them. Give me a break.

The only real disadvantage of this car is its reliability. The driver's side power window in my car derailed itself half the time towards the top and I had to push down on it (!) while raising it to get it to close properly. The passenger side window's motor was sluggish and sometimes couldn't raise the window. The stereo's amp broke. The cruise control usually required two pushes to activate. The cigarette lighter got detached. The trunk props didn't work and I had to rest the door on my head (!) when loading and unloading stuff. The wiper springs got too weak to really wipe any water off. The wire to the rear defroster broke. The power mirrors only worked half the time. The A/C required so much power that it made the car very difficult to drive. When I sold the car, the driver's side door hinge was rusting, which made it hard to close the door and made the "door ajar" light flicker. The lower plastic panel on the driver's side door fell off because it kept catching on the car's front quarter-panel. There was a dent in the back bumper because of poor design (it seems that almost all pre-95 Eclipses have this dent). My car also suffered a little from the infamous Eclipse hot-start problem, where if you drive the car for a while, turn it off, and then try to drive it again within the following 20-30 minutes, it sputters and stalls a couple of times.

I always trusted the car, mechanically. It required a lot of maintenance, but I was never worried about being stranded at the side of the road. I needed two new O2 sensors, new master & slave cylinders (they were leaking), new lifters (I had the lifter tick problem), a new heater core (it was leaking a little), and some other stuff that I've forgotten.

Well, last summer my water pump broke and I was stranded at 2 AM in the middle of nowhere, WA. I lost some faith in my car after that, but not too much, because the incident seemed like a fluke. The water pump only had 20k miles on it.

Anyway, I think this would be a great car for people who are mechanically inclined. The performance and ride are way better than anything else you can buy for $5000 these days.

Amount Paid (US$): 5200
Condition: Used
Model Year: 1992
Model and Options: GSX