2014 Mitsubishi Mirage: Are Your Eyes Deceiving You?

The Mirage is a five-door sub-compact. In certain markets, there’s the Attrage, which is a Mirage sedan.

Plasma purple, anyone?

The trunk’s loading height is significant and the opening rather small.

Don’t you find that it looks like the last generation Hyundai Accent? Note the antenna – a good ole’ metal rod.

The Mirage is Mitsubishi’s first North American sub-compact.

You’re eyes are not deceiving you – this Mirage really does exist!

You can clearly see where the roof hinges are situated (under the bulges on the roof).

The Mirage is made in Thailand.

The Dunlop Enasave tires favour fuel economy over handling.

12 cylinders, 296 horses, 296 lbs-ft of torque: only if you have four Mirages! Note that certain parts are hardly painted at all. We were driving a pre-production model. Mitsubishi tells us that this problem will be corrected on the cars being sold.

Although the design is rather ordinary, it’s very good overall.

The materials are not the highest quality, but we’ve seen worse on sub-compacts.

On some versions, the driver’s seat is height adjustable.

On the ES, only the front windows are electric.

The continuously variable transmission is surprisingly sophisticated for such an economical car and prioritizes fuel consumption.

The five-speed manual’s shifter turns out to be precise. A longer test drive will teach us more about it. We were only able to take it for a spin in town.

The buttons are large and easy to use.

For a sub-compact, the space in the back is surprising. Notice how flat the seat is. It’s rather comfortable, too.

This trunk isn’t very large.

With the seatbacks folded down, the space is larger but not as good as in other cars. It’s too bad that the seat backs don’t form a flat bottom with the rest of the trunk.