2006 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart Road Test
|
[12/26/2005] I can remember not so very long ago when I, as well as countless others, fell in love with little Japanese compacts, their smooth rides, can-do attitudes and small, efficient engines. Why though? There are certainly far more desirable cars out there than front wheel drive Hondas, Toyotas and Mitsubishis.
|
I can remember not so very long ago when I, as well as countless others, fell in love with little Japanese compacts, their smooth rides, can-do attitudes and small, efficient engines. Why though? There are certainly far more desirable cars out there than front wheel drive Hondas, Toyotas and Mitsubishis.
The answer so far as I can tell has to do with attainability. For not a whole lot of money, you could get into a well built, comfortable and efficient car that is fun to drive, easy on the eyes and very easy on the wallet. And being Japanese, you could drive the tar out of it and it would just keep going, with a smile on its face, forever. They provided their owners with fun and excitement that was good looking and affordable. For some, having your own mobility and freedom is cooler than any Viper, Lamborghini or Porsche any day.
The 2006 Mitsubishi Ralliart package comes loaded with features and toys. There is a mild body enhancing treatment, with skirts, clear tail lights and a rear spoiler, among other things, distinguishing it from its "smart but not as sexy" looking twin.
The aforementioned style elements are applied with a great deal of understanding of that line between sporty and silly. The Ralliart doesn't look overstyled. From no angle does it look overdone or flamboyant. Rather, it simply looks like a reminder of why so many fell in love with Japanese compact sedans in the first place. On top are a sunroof and an Alfalfa-antenna which feeds tunes into the optional stereo my tester featured, with its in-dash 6-CD changer and built-in subwoofer. There are even 16-inch wheels, though the folks at Mitsubishi fitted my tester with a set of Nexen snow tires on steel rims to keep me and their ride intact.
The rear end is squat, with a large window overlooking a fairly short trunk. The windows are tall on the sides too, as is the windshield. The Lancer isn't trying to hide its sedan-ness by having a high beltline and short windows. I find the styling to be well laid out and distinct in most respects, charming in that Mitsubishi kind of way.
Hop inside and you'll immediately notice the well-bolstered and supportive seats, trimmed in a red and black mesh in the center with softer material making up the outer portions. There are several adjustments for the driver seat, offering an optimal driving position while looking out over the low dashboard through the tall windshield. Logging no less than 12 highway hours in my testers means I can tell you with relative certainty that you won't find better seats in this price range. I mentioned about the tall windows all around you--this translates into a great deal of visibility from within the car and minimal blind spots. I got to thinking, if you had to travel a fair bit, to and from school, work or in and out of town, this car will make a fantastic companion. No highway road trip should be without a sunroof and reasonably powerful stereo, and the Ralliart delivers here.
The rest of the interior is a little dated. The lines, the flow and the controls all around the dashboard look as though Mitsubishi created the interior about 6 or 7 years ago and installed it for this 2006 model. It is assembled with a great attention to detail, and a quality feel exists throughout. You will get to ask your friends which late nineties imported car the dashboard reminds you of. You will most often get "Mazda Protegé" as a reply. Don't get me wrong: having an old fashioned interior is not a bad thing. For instance, the HVAC controls are all large and easy to manipulate, and the lines are clean and tidy. Do you smoke? You shouldn't, but if you do, there is an ashtray and lighter in place of the standard 12 volt outlet at the front of the center console. The trunk offers plenty of room, with folding seats if you ski, snowboard or need to carry a ladder with you. The subwoofer included with the optional stereo takes up a bit of space, though its benefits outweigh its costs.
I've got one minor complaint about the interior, in regard to the instrument cluster. The red color used as backlighting is supposed to be easy on one's eyes, though personally I'm not very fond of it, and I know many share my opinion. In this particular case, the numbers simply aren't bright enough and that makes it hard to read the dials. The needles are too bright, casting their light over a large portion of the instrument faces making the dim lettering and numbering even harder to read. In the daytime, the instruments are black against white and look fantastic.
No amount of aesthetics can make a car a shred sportier, though we often see those who disagree. So, to back up the sporty look, Mitsubishi has installed a 2.4-liter MIVEC (Mitsubishi Innovative Valve timing and lift Electronic Control) engine which creates 162 horsepower and as much pound-feet of torque, and spins the front wheels via a 5-speed manual gearbox.
Just a second now, but that isn't really a huge amount of power from a larger four-cylinder engine, is it?
Here's the thing.
Once one decides on the amount of power a vehicle should have, they have two ways to go about generating it. The four-cylinder engine could take one of two forms. The first one is a bit like Richard Simmons: a smaller displacement unit which is highly stressed, generally noisy and not very smooth. The smaller-displacement, higher-output engines tend to need to be revved up to, say, 7 or 8 thousand RPM to do their job. The other alternative is to create a larger-displacement engine that doesn't break a sweat to do the same thing, and doesn't need to be revved up like a motorcycle to send you on your way. The choice to use a larger engine is often a wise one, especially in the case of the Lancer Ralliart. The bigger engine never works as hard to do what it does, and so it has an easy life. For this reason, it's peaceful, pleasant and very smooth. It's also so quiet, in fact, that if you listen to the stereo at any sort of volume, you would be hard pressed to hear the engine doing its work. A full throttle blast to the redline doesn't mean a pause in your conversation. The 2.4-liter unit provides plenty of low-end grunt, making passing a breeze even without a downshift. There is a pleasant, eager, peaky band of power even approaching redline as well. Mitsubishi's clever timing system allows the
engine to have both the noted low-end power as well as higher RPM eagerness. Given this engine's quiet and smooth operation, eagerness to rev, pleasant attitude and respectable highway mileage (just over 7 liters per 100 km's), I think I have found one of my new favorite Japanese 4-cylinder engines.
The 5-speed manual gearbox is a good match for that engine too, with a fairly short throw calling up evenly spaced gear ratios that have no trouble bringing the engine to life with a downshift or two. The gears are heavily synchronized, meaning no jerky, jolting gearshifts but only smooth and consistent ones, even when you are in a hurry. The shifter is easy to manipulate, though perhaps not as precise as a Sentra SE-R or a Mazda 3. Metal pedals have been installed too, spaced apart perfectly for heel and toe work should you be into that sort of thing. Trouble is, if you are, you won't be able to hear the throttle blips since the engine is so quiet.
The answer so far as I can tell has to do with attainability. For not a whole lot of money, you could get into a well built, comfortable and efficient car that is fun to drive, easy on the eyes and very easy on the wallet. And being Japanese, you could drive the tar out of it and it would just keep going, with a smile on its face, forever. They provided their owners with fun and excitement that was good looking and affordable. For some, having your own mobility and freedom is cooler than any Viper, Lamborghini or Porsche any day.
The 2006 Mitsubishi Ralliart package comes loaded with features and toys. There is a mild body enhancing treatment, with skirts, clear tail lights and a rear spoiler, among other things, distinguishing it from its "smart but not as sexy" looking twin.
The aforementioned style elements are applied with a great deal of understanding of that line between sporty and silly. The Ralliart doesn't look overstyled. From no angle does it look overdone or flamboyant. Rather, it simply looks like a reminder of why so many fell in love with Japanese compact sedans in the first place. On top are a sunroof and an Alfalfa-antenna which feeds tunes into the optional stereo my tester featured, with its in-dash 6-CD changer and built-in subwoofer. There are even 16-inch wheels, though the folks at Mitsubishi fitted my tester with a set of Nexen snow tires on steel rims to keep me and their ride intact.
The rear end is squat, with a large window overlooking a fairly short trunk. The windows are tall on the sides too, as is the windshield. The Lancer isn't trying to hide its sedan-ness by having a high beltline and short windows. I find the styling to be well laid out and distinct in most respects, charming in that Mitsubishi kind of way.
Hop inside and you'll immediately notice the well-bolstered and supportive seats, trimmed in a red and black mesh in the center with softer material making up the outer portions. There are several adjustments for the driver seat, offering an optimal driving position while looking out over the low dashboard through the tall windshield. Logging no less than 12 highway hours in my testers means I can tell you with relative certainty that you won't find better seats in this price range. I mentioned about the tall windows all around you--this translates into a great deal of visibility from within the car and minimal blind spots. I got to thinking, if you had to travel a fair bit, to and from school, work or in and out of town, this car will make a fantastic companion. No highway road trip should be without a sunroof and reasonably powerful stereo, and the Ralliart delivers here.
The rest of the interior is a little dated. The lines, the flow and the controls all around the dashboard look as though Mitsubishi created the interior about 6 or 7 years ago and installed it for this 2006 model. It is assembled with a great attention to detail, and a quality feel exists throughout. You will get to ask your friends which late nineties imported car the dashboard reminds you of. You will most often get "Mazda Protegé" as a reply. Don't get me wrong: having an old fashioned interior is not a bad thing. For instance, the HVAC controls are all large and easy to manipulate, and the lines are clean and tidy. Do you smoke? You shouldn't, but if you do, there is an ashtray and lighter in place of the standard 12 volt outlet at the front of the center console. The trunk offers plenty of room, with folding seats if you ski, snowboard or need to carry a ladder with you. The subwoofer included with the optional stereo takes up a bit of space, though its benefits outweigh its costs.
I've got one minor complaint about the interior, in regard to the instrument cluster. The red color used as backlighting is supposed to be easy on one's eyes, though personally I'm not very fond of it, and I know many share my opinion. In this particular case, the numbers simply aren't bright enough and that makes it hard to read the dials. The needles are too bright, casting their light over a large portion of the instrument faces making the dim lettering and numbering even harder to read. In the daytime, the instruments are black against white and look fantastic.
No amount of aesthetics can make a car a shred sportier, though we often see those who disagree. So, to back up the sporty look, Mitsubishi has installed a 2.4-liter MIVEC (Mitsubishi Innovative Valve timing and lift Electronic Control) engine which creates 162 horsepower and as much pound-feet of torque, and spins the front wheels via a 5-speed manual gearbox.
Just a second now, but that isn't really a huge amount of power from a larger four-cylinder engine, is it?
Here's the thing.
Once one decides on the amount of power a vehicle should have, they have two ways to go about generating it. The four-cylinder engine could take one of two forms. The first one is a bit like Richard Simmons: a smaller displacement unit which is highly stressed, generally noisy and not very smooth. The smaller-displacement, higher-output engines tend to need to be revved up to, say, 7 or 8 thousand RPM to do their job. The other alternative is to create a larger-displacement engine that doesn't break a sweat to do the same thing, and doesn't need to be revved up like a motorcycle to send you on your way. The choice to use a larger engine is often a wise one, especially in the case of the Lancer Ralliart. The bigger engine never works as hard to do what it does, and so it has an easy life. For this reason, it's peaceful, pleasant and very smooth. It's also so quiet, in fact, that if you listen to the stereo at any sort of volume, you would be hard pressed to hear the engine doing its work. A full throttle blast to the redline doesn't mean a pause in your conversation. The 2.4-liter unit provides plenty of low-end grunt, making passing a breeze even without a downshift. There is a pleasant, eager, peaky band of power even approaching redline as well. Mitsubishi's clever timing system allows the
engine to have both the noted low-end power as well as higher RPM eagerness. Given this engine's quiet and smooth operation, eagerness to rev, pleasant attitude and respectable highway mileage (just over 7 liters per 100 km's), I think I have found one of my new favorite Japanese 4-cylinder engines.
The 5-speed manual gearbox is a good match for that engine too, with a fairly short throw calling up evenly spaced gear ratios that have no trouble bringing the engine to life with a downshift or two. The gears are heavily synchronized, meaning no jerky, jolting gearshifts but only smooth and consistent ones, even when you are in a hurry. The shifter is easy to manipulate, though perhaps not as precise as a Sentra SE-R or a Mazda 3. Metal pedals have been installed too, spaced apart perfectly for heel and toe work should you be into that sort of thing. Trouble is, if you are, you won't be able to hear the throttle blips since the engine is so quiet.
[Sourse]
celebrity gallery | travel photo | motorcycle gallery | Dine in the USA
| Share You car picture |
| Website Contents © All Rights Reserved |
Conception by Universal Studio
|