Thursday, Nov 27, 2014 at 22:42
Noldi:
In January last year, we bought a Mits Pajero for me and an Outlander for my wife. Reason (apart from too much money at the time) was access. Both of us are getting on in age, and getting in and out of a regular car was getting harder. With the Outlander, we simply step in or out of it. The Pajero we have to climb up a bit, but that is another story. Incidentally, I simply adore the Pajero. The Outlander was bought as the runabout and for short trips (about 850 km to visit our daughter). The Pajero is used for the longer trips and towing our caravan.
Thusfar, we have done about 27000 km in the Outlander. My wife loves it. It has a lot of road noise, and has a fairly harsh ride, but otherwise we think it is good. It is the very basic vehicle - a 2WD, 2L petrol, manual transmission. The engine is a MIVEC engine which has variable valve timing and lots of electronics to get the most out of a litre of petrol. On a flat country run, we get about 6.4 L/100 km at 100 km/h true speed. The speedo is awful - it indicates 108 when you are doing 100 km/h. The Odometer is fairly accurate.
The fuel tank on the 2WD model is 63L - 60L for the 4WD, which also gets the 2.4 L version of the engine if you go for the petrol model. We can get a range of nearly 1000 km from a tank of fuel, although I start getting nervous after 900 km. We did get 1050 from one tank once - flat open country running at legal speeds.
I did the sums on diesel vs petrol, and found that the extra cost to go to the diesel probably would not be recovered within a reasonable time (say 5 years). To go diesel, it is by default a 4WD, and then you have a lot more costs with regular maintenance on the diesel. But oh how the diesel goes!
The 2L petrol engine has enough power to shift it along at traffic speeds, but I wouldn't want to be towing too much with it because there is enough power for the car and not much more.
We chose the manual transmission because neither of us like autos, and we so rarely go to major cities that the advantage of an auto would rarely be noticed. We have a friend who has an auto ASX, and I must admit that it is an excellent transmission - most unlike the regular auto transmissions. It is the CVT version. I know nothing about the long-term reliability of CVT's, so cannot comment on that aspect.
One thing I noted before we bought the car - ours has no temperature gauge. Neither does the Subaru Forester, which was a serious contender for our money. The up-marker Outlander has a different dash display and that has a full digital temperature gauge. Ours has an idiot light which is blue when it is below operating temperature, red at temperature and I understand it starts flashing when it gets too hot. The flashing facility is probable a good thing because most people don't monitor their temp gauges enough. Instrumentation is fairly basic with our low spec car.
We chose the very basic model - 5 seats only instead of the 7
seat upper market version. In doing so, the rear
seat does not move forwards, and the leg room in the rear is excellent - a lot better than my Pajero. The rear
seat back does recline a bit, as
well as laying flat when you need extra cargo room.
The headlights are projector type bulbs. Adequate, but not brilliant (pardon the pun). For a lot of country driving, I would add a decent LED or HID spotlights to pick up the grasshoppers earlier. Even the base model has a manual adjustment for the headlights from inside the cabin. Nice touch - I wish I had that in my Pajero.
The steering is electrically boosted (not the usual hydraulic system) and it is very light. It takes a bit of getting acquainted but once you know it, it is very good. Accurate and reasonable
feedback.
I have found the paint to be prone to stone chips. Other than that, the vehicle is basically a very sound car. We did consider Subaru Forester, Nissan Xtrail and Toyota Rav4, as
well as the Koreans, but ultimately it was the price and our long history with Mitsubishis which swung us to the Outlander.
So there you have it - our summary of why we bought it and why we still have it. Hope this is of some help to your deliberations. If you have any questions, shoot me a message and I'll try to answer them ASAP.
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542258
Follow Up By: Ron N - Friday, Nov 28, 2014 at 11:47
Friday, Nov 28, 2014 at 11:47
Erad, you'll find that very few current-model cars have a temperature gauge, unless they are a "sports model" with a full set of instruments.
I recently bought a new Camry to replace my wifes 2001 Camry and I was quite surprised to see there's no longer any temperature gauge fitted to the Camrys.
As far as speedos go, they are all calibrated to show between 5-10% error from the factory - on the optimistic side. This is done to ensure that no-one can reliably argue in court that their speedo reads less than the correct speed, when they are trying to avoid speeding fines.
The most accurate speedo I have ever encountered was in that old Camry. It was 1kmh out at 70kmh (it read 71), and I tested that car several times in an official
police speed
test site, to ensure that what I was seeing was correct.
Cheers, Ron.
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828554