The time has come for me to put my Mitsubishi Mirage down like the sick old dog it is. In fact, my car kind of reminds me of a common house pet - it’s cute but it’s a chore to care for it. When it took a turn for the worse I was saddened but a bit relieved to put it out of its misery.
EXTERIOR
The Mirage is as plain-looking a car as a car can be. It’s very 90's styling in that it’s sleek but not too sleek to try and show off. It’s quite small, especially considering that it’s a four-door car that is about the size of a two-door jalopy. From the front view it looks very sporty, and the rear view is nice too but from the side it looks rather funny. It’s like someone took an 80's model Plymouth Horizon or Dodge Omni and stretched it out a little.
INTERIOR
For a car with such little interior space it’s a wonder the Mirage is a sedan instead of a 2-door hatchback. Being a single guy it’s fine for me and a passenger but any more than that and we all have problems. There is virtually NO room in the backseat for an adult, especially THREE of them! Even large children would be a little cramped back there at best. The doors are so small I can’t even put things such as a large TV, desk chair or unassembled furniture in the back. Mostly the back is a crumpled zone in case you get rear-ended by an SUV or truck..
The driver’s seat isn’t much better. There’s very little leg room for long road trips unless you take your shoes off and put your feet underneath the pedals. The cloth seats are fine for daily commuting but don’t offer much support in terms of long-distance traveling. I’ve made many trips of over 500 consecutive miles in this car and by hour three I was hurting. These seats are also a pain, literally, in the winter since they build up a static charge when you get out and shock yourself as you close the door!
The trunk is surprisingly huge, however. If with my sub woofer box there’s still more room than a car this small would be expected to have. Of course, I’d be more than willing to sacrifice some of that space for more leg room in the back seat.
FEATURES
There isn’t anything particularly special in the features included with this car. Its nicest feature I’ve always enjoyed is its air conditioning which always got cold quickly in the summer and hot in the winter so at least temperature was never a problem for me. It’s got five different ventilation settings, three of which have the option between vent and AC but if you choose either of the windshield settings it automatically switches the AC on (how does the windshield know the air being blow on it is generated by an AC compressor I’ve always wondered?).
The power windows and locks are a nice amenity to any car, although only the driver’s window has the one-push option to go all the way down. The other three, and the driver’s window on the way up, you have to push and hold. The side view mirrors are also powered which is nice, but a feature you rarely ever use unless the drivers are constantly changing, right?
Keyless entry isn’t standard but I had a car alarm installed and that was part of the package and is something I’ve always used.
The display only shows miles per hour, engine temperature and fuel remaining. It would have been nice to have a tachometer given that is a stick-shift car, although the gauges are already pretty big and adding that would make it a big ridiculous I suppose.
ENGINE
This is an aspect of the Mirage that surprises me a little after all these years. It’s only four measly cylinders but is a 1.8-liter - the same as many 2006 model cars. But don’t ask me about torque or gear ratio or anything like that because I don’t know it. For such a wussy of a car it has a LOT of pep coming off the line. For the most part first gear takes you to 10 mph, second to 20 mph, third to 35 mph, fourth to 45 mph and fifth up to about 85 mph. The speedometer goes up to 110 but unless you’re going full speed down a 89-degree hill for a few miles I don’t think it’s possible to get the car much faster than 86 mph. At 77 mph the engine REALLY starts to become loud and makes me nervous, which is why I rarely drive faster than 72 or so.
The actual transmission itself is tighter than security at the White House. This was the first stick I’ve ever driven so I had no frame of reference. Then I drove some friends’ cars and couldn’t get over how smoothly they shifted. When shifting the Mirage you have to push the clutch all the way to the floor and gently ease up and down on the gas to prevent you passengers from being flung forward and backward in their seats. It’s like the car is always in a rush even when you’re TRYING to do 10, 15 or 20 mph around the parking lot, suburban roads or other such places.
I guess these problems are compensated by the fact the car is excellent on gas. The tank holds about 11 gallons and I’m usually able to get between 270 and 290 city miles on a single tank. On long road trips I can go over 320 miles before absolutely having to fill up again. As many flaws as the Mirage has its good fuel economy is its only real saving grace and something worth bragging about to all my truck and sports car-driving friends.
THE DRIVE
If the Mirage were a person it would be a short, but somewhat muscular guy with a severe inferiority complex since it always sounds like it’s trying to prove something to the world. It’s an usually loud and powerful ride, even at slow speeds and this is discounting the fact that I have an after-market muffler installed. On those long road trips I pack a bottle of Excederin because I always have a massive headache once the drive is through.
My car is also very bumpy and this is considering that I’ve had new springs, shocks and struts installed on the front end. For such a light car it shouldn’t be bumping up and down so much. Is it just mine or are all Mirages like this?
At least the car has good sound with its four speakers and the two tweeters installed right next to the driver and passenger’s heads (unfortunately mine never worked). I have a 12-inch JL sub woofer box in the trunk that generates some mighty bass coupled with some screaming decibels courtesy of the factory speakers. No matter how much the car stinks in every other aspect at least I was always guaranteed some great-sounding music.
MAINTENANCE
One of the most positive aspects of this car is that for the most part it’s been easy to take care of it. The only engine problem I can remember was when the clutch got stuck and I couldn’t shift the car at all and that was only a $150 repair.
Almost everything I’ve had to get fixed on this car is directly tied to the fact that it was lowered in the front when I bought it. That caused the oil pan to wear out and actually spring a leak and the entire thing had to be replaced. The front end is also torn up terribly from road debris but I stopped caring about that a long time ago.
I always took my car to a Mitsubishi dealer for maintenance even though I always suspected they did more harm to it than good. For example, the last time I brought it in the AC was working fine, but when they looked at it they said the compressor was broke and for $800 I could get a new one.
They also said it needs a new bearing for something, I can’t remember what. But it was expensive and is probably the reason I get a “check engine” light on every start up now.
Also, the “SRS” light on the dash has been lit for years. They recommend installing a new air bag to the tune of $900 even though the one I’ve got will function properly, according to their computer.
As far as oil changes and upkeep goes I’ve always been good about getting it done on time and the car has held up. Not until it hit the 100,000 mile mark did the problems I just mentioned occur.
Oh yeah, last week the freaking muffler broke off! But again, I attribute that to the car being lowered so I don’t blame the engineers for that.
FINAL THOUGHTS
I’m not really sure who Mitsubishi designed the Mirage for. It’s way too small inside to comfortably fit a family who would own it for its lifetime. It’s not nearly sporty so that rules out pretty much the other half of the car-driving market. If it were automatic transmission I suppose it would appeal to very conservative drivers who just want to get from Point A to Point B and not haul a lot of cargo around with them. Since it’s a stick it’s too much of a hassle for soccer moms, the elderly and novice drivers to adapt to. I guess it’s for people like me - suckers who just really want a car (read the history of me and Mirage below for further explanation).
MY MIRAGE AND ME - THE STORY OF A BOY AND HIS CRAPPY CAR
I bought my Mirage in the Spring of 2002 when I was still a very naive person and had just barely made it a year in the Navy. I was stationed at my final school before going to the fleet and I just wanted a car to get around town. I didn’t have a car at my last school up in the tundra of Great Lakes, Illinois but that didn’t bother me because I never really had any time, friends, money or reason to go anywhere. But this was Virginia Beach and I knew there were a lot of things to do and people to see and I needed a ride fast. So I picked up a local newspaper and shopped around. I saw the Mirage listed for only $5,000 and figured I could afford that. I didn’t really know much about the Mitsubishi line but I figured if it was Japanese it was probably a good deal.
The dude that sold me it was very weird. He was like a cross between Eminem and Bill Engvall. He had a few other cars at his house that looked like they were rejects from “Pimp My Ride.” The Mirage he sold me was a work in progress, apparently. He lowered the front by literally cutting the springs, not replacing them with shorter ones, just cutting them! He put a custom Flow Master intake in the engine and an after-market muffler on the exhaust to make it SOUND like a “Fast & The Furious”-type car. He even installed racing pedals and a chrome stick shift for added coolness. However, he did have a nice JL 12-inch sub woofer complete with box and an amplifier which impressed me.
Why I went through and bought the car, especially considering it was a manual and I had never driven a manual before, is something I’ve never understood. At least the guy was nice enough to give me free driving lessons and $150 cash to buy a new radio since the one he had was broken.
Over that summer I made some minor improvements to it such as having the windows tinted, adding rain guards, getting a new stereo, having the speakers tweaked and a few months later even getting the front suspension raised back to factory specs.... or at least that’s what I was told. A few months after that the car’s front end started to lower again and me being both lazy and stupid I either never realized this or just never got around to taking it back and having it done correctly (I think if I did they wouldn’t have fixed it since the receipt clearly says “lowering springs”).
So for over THREE LONG YEARS I drove this car around the Hampton Roads area. I took it on several trips to and from upstate New York which are about 1,000 miles round trip and the Mirage never broke down from the extreme cold or heat or road conditions. Honestly, I’m impressed it was able to survive all that.
Now it’s almost four years later and the Mirage is on its last leg. I’ve poured so much money into getting this thing fixed it’s ridiculous. I’d venture to guess I’ve spent MORE money on getting it fixed than I have in actual car payments. I’ve had to have the entire oil pan replaced due it being lowered which caused it to take a lot of abuse from the road and over time wore out a big hole in it. The transmission also got stuck around 80,000 miles but wasn’t too expensive to fix. The SRS light on the dash has been lit since shortly after I bought it and would cost about $900 to fix. At the 100,000 mile point the air conditioning compressor bit the dust which I also declined to have fixed since it’s the winter and the regular old “heat” still works fine.
The final straw came last week when the tail pipe which connects the muffler to the actual exhaust output split and separated and my muffler was dragging underneath the car for a very long drive before I realized what had happened (I jury-rigged it by taking some wire coat hangers to strap it up so it isn’t dangling anymore). I have a feeling if I get stopped by a cop before I get rid of this clunker they might consider it unsafe for street driving and impound it!
SEE ALSO:
1987 Plymouth Horizon
1991 Pontiac Sunbird
1997 Mitsubishi Mirage
2006 Honda Civic
2008 Toyota Yaris
Amount Paid (US$): 5,000.00
Condition: Used
Model Year: 1997
Model and Options: LS
