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Each of the last two weekends I've borrowed the same Toyota Sienta from the car share service, primarily to get out of Tokyo and up into areas not terribly accessible by public transit. This has included driving on the highway, suburban streets, and in the city as well a little bit. The Sienta is a small minivan based on the VItz/Yaris platform. So it's tiny as hell, but somehow also has a third-row seat -- in general use you store that under the second row, which means in five-seater mode the rear end is pretty generous, but with seats up it's absolutely miniscule. I've driven a number of the small hatchbacks on the market, and the Toyotas -- the Vitz and Aqua in particular -- have left me extremely annoyed. They drive really squishy, they never want to actually move, and the dashboard layout isn't great. I've also driven the C-HR, and while it was better than I expected and better than the older small lineup mates, it wasn't particularly great. The Sienta was in the same group as the C-HR -- pretty well appointed for a cloth-seat family van, perfectly good as a mover of people, but absolutely flat to drive. The steering wheel is stupidly low (note: I'm a giant), but it still had plenty of headroom, even with the seat raised up a bit. When I slid the seat forward a bit to allow a passenger in, I almost couldn't get out because the wheel was that drat low. It's got a CVT, of course, so it didn't really shift so much as change the tone of its grunt. Put it in S mode a bit off highway and it responded more sharply, but still not great. Give me a real automatic any day. The one really nice thing about it is the sliding doors on both sides -- those come in more handy than I would've imagined. So, yeah. It's a Toyota -- will probably last a gajillion miles, but not really ever inspire any excitement in that time. As a family mover it's fine, but I probably won't go for it again unless I definitely need seven seats.
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Mar 23, 2020 11:59
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If I can be allowed to rant here... went and turned in the Rogue and this clown at the front desk said I was going to owe $300 because I have been to the beach and there was sand in the car. Now I know ya'll don't know me but I return things better than I receive them, I clean up hotel rooms before I leave, I stack plates and wipe the table when I am leaving a restaurant. I saw no reason to "detail" this Rogue. He said we don't have vacuums that will clean this up we will have to send it out. We are talking normal sand grains off of people shorts and sandals, not buckets of sand. This is a month long rental that I got filthy as I expect, I had to run an ozone generator to get the funk out when I got it, windows were so dirty they obviously hadn't been wiped down, barely vacuumed. I went home in a rage and shop vac'd it and did a mini interior detail and took it back parked in the middle of the parking lot with all 5 doors opened and made him come out. I was like we good now? He was like man we just don't have vacuums that will pick up sand. I used a 20 year old worn out shop vac. I had the phone I was ready to film this dude saying I owed $300 for a detail. THIS SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED. All this car needed was a 10 minute clean up and I shouldn't have to do it. RANT OVER
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Mar 23, 2020 19:26
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everdave posted:If I can be allowed to rant here... What company?
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Mar 23, 2020 19:46
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everdave posted:If I can be allowed to rant here... What company, what location?
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Mar 23, 2020 20:03
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Midjack posted:What company, what location? Hertz Cookeville, TN   Pictures are of how I returned it and was told there would be a $300 cleaning charge. I took it home and shop vac'd it and wiped down all surfaces. It did not come with rear floor mats or any of the rear cargo stuff. I have a receipt now showing I owe nothing. Yes absolutely there were some sand grains in the folds of the seats and carpet fibers in the back. You tell me if that car needs a $300 interior detail. everdave fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Mar 23, 2020 |
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Mar 23, 2020 20:38
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drat, i have returned cars full of all kind of poo poo and aint heard nothing from National
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Mar 23, 2020 20:48
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I've gotten "clean" cars that were dirtier than that. Any of the neighborhood rental offices (Hertz or Enterprise) are really terrible. I don't know if it's a franchise thing or what but they always have cars with extremely high mileage and they're usually dicks about the stupidest stuff. Airport locations are a night and day difference in customer service and rates (obviously).
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Mar 23, 2020 20:49
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I have never had them say anything before. I was astonished and enraged. I promise you it was cleaner when I returned it BEFORE cleaning it more than when I got it.
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Mar 23, 2020 20:53
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everdave posted:Hertz Cookeville, TN That car is fine and that Hertz sucks rear end.
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Mar 23, 2020 20:53
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everdave posted:Hertz Cookeville, TN The only way I can believe that you got that kind of a response from a Hertz location would be if it was a HLE since they can really suck (I work for Hertz). As a civilian renter I've brought back Hertz rentals with a whole beach of sand and parking lot mud all over after using the car to go surfing and never heard a peep upon return. I'd absolutely ROAST the return location with Hertz US and see if you can get a couple thousand points or something.
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Mar 24, 2020 02:14
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ausgezeichnet posted:The only way I can believe that you got that kind of a response from a Hertz location would be if it was a HLE since they can really suck (I work for Hertz). As a civilian renter I've brought back Hertz rentals with a whole beach of sand and parking lot mud all over after using the car to go surfing and never heard a peep upon return. I’ve rented from this location many times over the past 5+ years first time I have had any issue. Like I said there was definitely sand granules in the carpet and seat seams but again as I am used to car was funky and gross when I got it. A shop vac and some interior cleaner and a microfiber had it better than it has been since they started renting it. I haven’t rented from here in 2+ years bc I had a brand new car but I have went to all RHD imports now and I found a deal for vacation. It is the only Cookeville TN location. Still pissed. App says call for past rentals and complaints before 7 CST IT IS ON TOMORROW I am isolating at work (work for myself) I will raise hell everdave fucked around with this message at 02:59 on Mar 24, 2020 |
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Mar 24, 2020 02:36
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I have a 2019 Nissan Altima while my car is out of service with hail damage and broken glass. It's...fine. Interior is nice in some areas and really cheap in others. Overall I think Mazda interiors are a lot nicer. Infotainment screen and center screen are impossible to read if there is sunlight on them. Power is adequate, pretty similar to my Mazda6 but the accelerator pedal has a looong travel. Nissan really does not want you to give it the beans. Adaptive cruise is really nice but lane departure warning is annoying as hell. 7/10. it's fine. Not great. Not horrible. Edit: the tach in this car is really weird. The first tick mark is 1000 but it's not labelled. The second tick mark is 2000 but every tick above that is 500RPM increments. For some reason it still goes to 8000. Previa_fun fucked around with this message at 03:45 on May 7, 2020 |
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May 6, 2020 17:55
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Last year, when we were still allowed to move around and do stuff, I had three fieldwork trips down to the coast, plus a couple of other trips including a conference in Brisbane. I live in Armidale, NSW, Australia, and I work at the university. I'm a scientist, I work on the microorganisms that live in flowers and I've been able to work on some projects in blueberry orchards near Coffs Harbour, which is about 3 hours away. Work trips mean I can use a university-owned vehicle, and because I've been working with colleagues who have the 4x4 necessary to access the farm roads and haul around larger bits of field equipment (so many coolers) I just need a simple highway-capable runabout to get me down and back up the Waterfall Way. Shortly before I started here in January 2019, my department was given a 2019 Hyundai i30 (diesel) by Vehicle Services (the central fleet for the uni) to use for exactly this kind of work; when I went to talk to the department accountant about arranging a vehicle, he handed me the keys and told me to look after it. I like to tell people to go talk to Frank, he's very helpful - the first time I met him, he gave me a car! This only works a little in getting people over the fact that Frank is really bad at replying to emails. When I first got the car, it had only about 500 km total on the odometer. In the four trips I took it on in 2019, I put on a couple of thousand kms total, and other people put on maybe 100 with a few little local trips. So I think of it as my car. It had some battery problems because it wasn't getting used enough.  Hyundai i30 01 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr Hyundai i30 02 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr Hyundai i30 03 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr Hyundai i30 04 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrIt's a commuter appliance, but because it's a small hatchback it's quite nimble and handles corners well. The little diesel motor is not very responsive, but will haul this car up to and beyond the maximum speed limit I see on my trips, 110km/h (I will not admit on the internet to any specific higher speeds). It sips fuel, which is good for my research budget, and the cruise control works well enough, once I realised it slows to match the speed of the vehicle in front - going up a hill behind a heavy truck, I thought the little motor was failing in some way because the speed just kept dropping. Then I passed the truck and all was well. The built in navigation is OK, if a little clumsy. I had to turn off the lane assist, I had accidentally turned it on then spend 10 minutes worried I'd broken the car somehow because it kept resisting my attempts to change lanes. The university motor pool has a policy for all new and replacement vehicles: diesel and automatic. The idea is to keep things as simple as possible for all the people who know and care nothing about cars, they just need to get to some meeting or whatever without damaging anything. This little guy fits the bill, and comes with a parking pass that lets me put it away right close to my office.
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Jul 25, 2020 08:08
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Standardising on diesel is an interesting move at this point. I guess it makes sense if you need a bunch of offroaders in the fleet but diesel cars are definitely going to be hard to get i the next couple of years - even now there are no diesel Golf/Mazda3/Corolla for the AU market. While we're on small, white commuter appliances here's the Corolla I rented last weekend to go and grab a set of wheels and tyres for my car (cheaper to fly and do a one way car rental than to organise shipping). I'm in New Zealand where covid has (at this stage) been eliminated but the entire country is closed to tourists so rental car companies are really hurting with a bunch of them having dumped their cars on the second hand market. This means that despite very low demand rentals are actually more expensive than usual and there isn't a lot of choice about what model you get.   First thought was drat this has a small boot - much smaller than my own Mazda3 which I thought was already on the small side for this class. Fortunately there was just enough width across the folded down rear seats for two wheels to fit side by side so everything fit fairly tidily.  (that's an 18" wheel with 215/45s so not huge or anything) Second thought was standard safety technology has come a very long way in the past couple of years. Even though this is the most basic Corolla available it had active cruise control, lane keep assist and LED headlights. The cruise control and headlights worked great and are definitely things I'd want on my next car. Lane keep assist was more hit or miss, it seemed to work just fine on motorways with multiple lanes and well defined lane markings but most of SH1 is single lane with very faint markings so the system only worked intermittently most of the way. At least it was easy to disable and didn't automatically switch itself back on. Like the i30 it felt fairly nimble and handled fairly well but being a rental with 30,000 hard kms it had a mismatched budget tyre on one of the front wheels which meant it felt a bit weird in the rain. Unfortunately the engine and (CVT) transmission didn't feel particularly well matched - in 'normal' mode it took it's sweet time changing down and in 'sports' mode it kept the cruising rpms high enough to be annoying, it really felt like there should be an in between setting. Fuel economy was pretty impressive for a non-hybrid though (that was the best leg, downhill overall but the average for the whole 700km trip was 5.4l/100km which is still good)  Overall Corollas are much, much better than they used to be but I was still glad to get back into my own car.
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Jul 26, 2020 00:21
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I just returned a 2020 Chrysler Pacifica I was actually excited to get this minivan. I have a Challenger and I enjoy it and so I knew the controls would be easy to figure out. These always look nice in the showroom and I was very curious what they drove like. The good - It fit five people plus luggage for over 2,000 miles comfortably. - It did good on gas (averaged about 27mpg) - The Uconnect system was, in fact, very much like my own car and thus recognizable. The bad -The auto start/stop sucked. I could have turned it off, but I didn't. You always knew when it shut off though, because the A/C would be very noticeably warmer, which made my passengers ask what was up more than once. - The 3.6 lacked any kind of balls. More than once I nearly put my ankle through the floorpan in the hope that it would cause the van to accelerate quicker. Merging onto busy interstates was difficult. Granted this was in a full van in very hilly country, but it was still gutless. - My god did it ever wallow. She's a large ship, Captain, and drives like one. - I hate power minivan doors and tailgates. I just want it to open and close. I don't want to wait for the motor to do it for me. - So I paid $100 extra at Enterprise to get nav. Turns out, none of their vans have nav, so it was refunded. Do'h. But I got to use Andoid Auto. Cool when it was working. I don't know if it was my phone or my cable or what, but the slightest jostling of the cable would cause it to disconnect. Sometimes not even a jostle. There would be a light breeze a few states over, and it would disconnect. Not ideal if you're using the nav on busy interstates. It probably disocnnected 30+ times each direction, and each time my passenger had to unplug the USB cable, wait a second, plug it back in, then wait about ten seconds to see if it would work. It usually would but a few times that had to be done more than once. The ugly -I thought this van had the ZF 8-speed transmission (duh, that's for RWD applications). I had heard excellent things and was hoping to see if it was as good as everybody says it is. It looks like I am wrong and it has a ZF 9-speed which is apparently different. Whatever this thing had: I loving hate it. Despite either eight or nine gears, I had two choices: absolutely no acceleration, or downshift about five gears and make my passengers ask what all the commotion is about. Oh, and it would take five seconds for that shift because it would think about all the lonely gears between. Seriously, going through Appalachia was a nightmare in traffic. If cruise was on and everything was steady-state it was fine, but trying to actually drive this thing in traffic and around town made me miss shifting gears so much that as soon as I got home I jumped in my MX-5 and drove around for awhile. It is primarily because of the transmission that I hope I never have to drive another Pacifica as long as I live. CornHolio fucked around with this message at 23:30 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 23:28
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Not definitive but using the kids extra android phone running 9 would disconnect like crazy with the slightest jostle in my Elantra I had and the Apple Car Play virtually never did unless I was using a known bad cable because I had left the good ones at work or home
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Jul 27, 2020 00:30
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Pretty much all Android Auto connection issues can be traced to the cable, just get a good quality one from Anker, etc. It doesn't matter if the cable works fine in other applications, it's something in the cable construction. Carplay is not affected by this for whatever reason.
Bulk Vanderhuge fucked around with this message at 03:33 on Jul 27, 2020 |
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Jul 27, 2020 03:30
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I've used both Android Auto and CarPlay in my Mazda and had the opposite experience - CarPlay was far more sensitive to cable quality whereas any old USB-C cable was fine with Android Auto.
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Jul 27, 2020 07:00
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Seems a bit unfair to compare a family hauler to a Miata.
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Jul 27, 2020 20:39
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I had a 2019 Elantra last week with 11,000 miles. My wife made it three minutes in that thing before she was overcome with nausea. I've never driven a car that's body felt so badly controlled. Always rolling, always wallowing, just incredible. There were times where I started getting nauseous myself while driving. I don't know if they're all like that or that one was just beaten to hell, but in 11,000 miles things shouldn't be so bad. With one solid shove of the top at the B pillar could get three to four oscillations before it steadied out.
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Jul 27, 2020 22:01
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Dave Inc. posted:I had a 2019 Elantra last week with 11,000 miles. My wife made it three minutes in that thing before she was overcome with nausea. I've never driven a car that's body felt so badly controlled. Always rolling, always wallowing, just incredible. There were times where I started getting nauseous myself while driving. A very high percentage of rentals I've had have been 10+ PSI over the specified tire pressure. I've had the exact same experience as you and dropping the pressure down to the recommended made it feel like a car. Pro-tip: Carry a tire pressure gauge with you when you rent a car. I keep one in my briefcase with the pens 
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Jul 27, 2020 22:37
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Also the hybrid solves some of those acceleration issues. It really helps out down low.
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Jul 27, 2020 23:08
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Wrar posted:Also the hybrid solves some of those acceleration issues. The junkyard takes care of the rest
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Jul 28, 2020 03:50
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I had an 18 Elantra for 2 years and it was a smooth and comfortable car. Even my youngest who was prone to barfing on long trips never got sick in it on 5+ trips to Florida in it (8-10 hours each way) must have been a rebuilt one or something else going on.
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Jul 28, 2020 04:22
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Mandalay posted:Seems a bit unfair to compare a family hauler to a Miata. True, but in all honesty I'd rather have driven the Cherokee I paid fifty dollars for than that van.
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Jul 28, 2020 12:09
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RIP Paul Walker posted:A very high percentage of rentals I've had have been 10+ PSI over the specified tire pressure. I've had the exact same experience as you and dropping the pressure down to the recommended made it feel like a car. This deserves a second mention. I have a tire gauge in my briefcase for this very reason.
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Aug 17, 2020 19:41
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Some defensive driving schools advise you to inflate the tires to their sidewall max.
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Aug 18, 2020 06:45
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Midjack posted:Some defensive driving schools advise you to inflate the tires to their sidewall max. Jesus.
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Aug 18, 2020 07:07
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The british army rents its white fleet cars and trucks so I have driven a lot of transit vans. They are almost completely unremarkable, though I did manage to roll one on its side up in Garelochhead training area. My own car has no space in the back so I rent estates / wagons reasonably frequently for lugging stuff around or carting more people. I pay for Octavias which are completely fine but normally get upgraded to something a bit bigger. This is usually great but can cause problems as you see with this A6 not fitting into Swiss street parking spaces:  Great car otherwise. That's the only time I've had an A6 but had Skoda Suberbs a few times which are also lovely cars. Rented a 124 in Puglia which was a very nice way to cruise around in the summer, except the insane driving on clifftop roads and incredibly polluted air in the tunnels.  seen with obligatory trullo. The worst rental I've ever been given was in Béziers in southern France where the only thing left was a white Kangoo like this one. Just ferociously, powerfully terrible and the least stylish car available anywhere. 
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Aug 18, 2020 14:04
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We just landed in Germany and got our rental car. It's a Mitsubishi Mirage/Space Star. It is utterly dreadful. Just dull and unlikeable in every way.
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Sep 13, 2020 20:58
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We (my wife and I) rented a Mitsubishi Mirage last month. Our car had died but we'd planned a vacation months previously and we had had a reasonably good experience with the local Thrifty agent a week prior (that Mitsu will be another post).  Mitsubishi Mirage 1 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrIt was wee and red.  Mitsubishi Mirage 2 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrSmall bright car in an empty dark car park (not pictured: the bastard of a Sacred Kingfisher on the beach that always took off 1/3 second before I could line up my camera).  Mitsubishi Mirage 3 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrThe hilariously tiny engine, a 1L 3-banger, was just about able to keep us going. We had that car packed to the roof because we're better at luggage tetris than we are at figuring out what not to bring. Our campsite was at the end of about 15 km of potholed dirt road, with a little creek to cross just outside the camp ground. When we arrived, we carefully walked the water and watched a couple of lifted 4WD utes go through it. We decided to go for it (rental car, amiright?) but the couple in the camper van behind us went elsewhere. Oh well, we made it through without issue, repeatedly going back and forth over several days. After having gone wading in our little red rental we decided to investigate the engine layout. The air intake is on top! Wonderful! We assumed this meant less chance of catastrophic engine damage if the water was a little deeper than expected. https://goo.gl/maps/CgonUEjAh9iav6eo9 this is a google maps look at our campground. It was great! Highly recommended. That motor did fine going down to the coast, but coming back up the Waterfall Way it was tough to keep it at speed. The twisty bits were fine, the 60km/h speed limit on that part is wildly optimistic for anything not trying to run it as a hillclimb. But there's about 80km of more gently rising and mostly less twisty stuff after Dorrigo and holding it at the 100km/h speed limit was noisy. No problems, though, just a big work-out for that little motor.  Mitsubishi Mirage 4 by Martin Brummell, on FlickrI'm proud of this. We were given 200 km/day for 5 days, and when I picked up the car it had 24 970 km on the odo but the paperwork said 24 976. So by my math we missed it by 1 km over, but by Thrifty's numbers we came in 5 km under. KozmoNaut posted:It is utterly dreadful. Just dull and unlikeable in every way. EDIT knox_harrington posted:The british army rents its white fleet cars and trucks so I have driven a lot of transit vans. They are almost completely unremarkable, though I did manage to roll one on its side up in Garelochhead training area. I missed this the first time I read this. Work vehicles are perfectly fine to talk about here. STORY. Please?
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Sep 14, 2020 06:50
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ExecuDork posted:It's not THAT bad, is it? Ours was by no means "good", but it was "good enough". My advice: find a shallow body of water to drive it through. That will make it more likeable! It's completely gutless, on par with the 60hp Citroën C3 we had a couple of years ago that we had to keep at 5000rpm in second gear to make it up a lot of hills here in southern Germany, so I'm not sure I believe the 70hp figure. 140kph on a flat is about what this can reliably sustain. I know Mitsubishi position it as a super efficient car, but that doesn't help if you're constantly having to rev it to 5-6000rpm to go anywhere. The steering is completely numb and feels like the rack is lubed with glue, just a really bad electric power steering system. The suspension does smooth out big undulations, yet does pretty much nothing to small bumps. It's an odd combination of soft and harsh. And just in general it feels like a discount car from the late 90s/early 2000s. It's not a lovely car, it obviously does the job of being a driveable vehicle, it's just a very bleh experience, no charm at all. Over the years we've rented Citroëns, Opels, Hyundais, Peugeots, Fords in the same segment. This is significantly worse than any of those. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 07:30 on Sep 14, 2020 |
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Sep 14, 2020 07:27
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ExecuDork posted:STORY. Please? I think probably the best van "rental" I've had was the black Transit we borrowed from the SAS that had blue lights integrated into the front and back. Quite a long way from CIA black helicopters but, yknow, UK military budget. The one up in Scotland was teaching on a reconnaissance / surveillance course. The course has a very demanding final exercise that's in some place where people don't want to or can't live. After I did the course as a student we discovered the large scale maps of that training area say "not suitable for dismounted infantry training". This exercise was up in a different training area near the Faslane naval base, which was chosen for the subs because it is covered by cloud almost all the time. It's mountainous and pretty inhospitable https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/-/medi...rine-home-1.jpg White vans are pretty good for covert drop-off / pick up because people treat them as invisible. So we use them for that and just general utility as well. However we pick them up in London and its almost impossible to get them with winter tyres. We had done the insertion a few days before and the students had crossed the mountains and put in an observation post looking onto a terrorist training camp we had set up (usual stuff). I was doing a resupply of the terrorists, and I think one of the students had fallen off a small cliff and needed to be checked over. The only vehicle I could take was a Transit. We had a couple of land rovers and L200s but they were all being used.. So a Transit on forestry roads in winter is not great, and halfway up the mountain it slid off the track, fortunately uphill, and keeled over onto its side. No biggie but the terrorists were unhappy they didn't get the resupply. I think we dragged it upright with a Landie. The student was fine as well, I'd made them all wear helmets whenever they were out of the OP so he was just a bit bruised.
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Sep 14, 2020 11:01
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ExecuDork posted:
Is it just me, or does it look like there's something that should be screwed into the intake just left of that big ugly rubber intake hose?
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Sep 14, 2020 11:55
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knox_harrington posted:After I did the course as a student we discovered the large scale maps of that training area say "not suitable for dismounted infantry training". Nice. So unpleasant the official advice is "don't walk here". BloodBag posted:Is it just me, or does it look like there's something that should be screwed into the intake just left of that big ugly rubber intake hose? It's not just you. I've seen similar on previous cars I've owned. My '88 Honda Prelude, for example, had a side-port kinda thing on the intake. Covering it with my hand when the engine was running did absolutely nothing, but maybe it has a role when the engine is working hard or the incoming air is dusty or something. Maybe somebody here can enlighten us?
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Sep 15, 2020 02:14
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KozmoNaut posted:It's completely gutless, on par with the 60hp Citroën C3 we had a couple of years ago that we had to keep at 5000rpm in second gear to make it up a lot of hills here in southern Germany, so I'm not sure I believe the 70hp figure. 140kph on a flat is about what this can reliably sustain. TBQH you are really selling me on this car
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Sep 15, 2020 02:30
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Like, I get where Mitsubishi is going with the general design, to make it as efficient as they can in the old-school way. Simplify and add lightness, apparently it has a lot more high strength steel than comparable cars, in order to use thinner material in a lot of places. And the drag coefficient is surprisingly low. At least the engine certainly doesn't mind spinning fast, it's just a shame the rest of the driving experience is so thoroughly bleh. I cannot adequately convey how bad the steering feels. You won't get anywhere near the promised 27km/l or whatever unless you drive like a grandma and never encounter any hills. On an 8% grade, I had to keep my foot welded to the floor in 2nd gear to go any faster than 60kph. KozmoNaut fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Sep 15, 2020 |
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Sep 15, 2020 08:20
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I feel it's worth mentioning that Mitsubishi sells like absolute poo poo anywhere there's actually a decent variety of tiny cheap cars available because like most things Mitsubishi build these days it's about 15 years behind the competition. Like put that garbage next to a new Aygo, Picanto, i10 or Swift and it's just a throwback to the bad old days.
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Sep 15, 2020 14:59
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The Mirage I drove did have an interior & dashboard that felt about ten to fifteen years old. The contrast between the 25K on the odometer and the endless cheap black plastic and basic-but-serviceable HVAC/Head unit controls really stood out to me, in particular because the previous week I'd been driving a 2019 or 2020 Mitsubishi Outlander. Same company, same model year (+/- a year I guess), completely different interior feel. The Mirage really feels like Mitsubishi is trying to make a car as cheap as possible, just hitting the safety standards as top priority (which is, I agree, the thing to prioritise) and letting everything else be whatever costs the least amount of money. There are probably parts that they've been buying or making, unchanged, for a couple of decades. I wonder if the corporate strategy is competition against the new and rapidly-expanding Chinese and Indian manufacturers that are (mostly) not yet selling in Western countries. I'm assuming there are a few (hundred) million people in Asia who would be receptive to a message like "Meets European safety and emissions standards, but priced for HERE!" from a recognised global brand. I expect if that is the case (wild speculation), losing market share in Germany, Australia, etc. is a small price to pay for a big advantage in emerging markets. Or, they just slapped the "Accept Lowest Bid" button a million times in a row and called it a day. EDIT: and yeah, the steering was like I was playing a video game through a laggy connection and using a no-name USB controller. "Lubed with glue" is a good description. I got used to it, but it was disappointing. ExecuDork fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Sep 16, 2020 |
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Sep 16, 2020 07:50
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 15:04 |
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Mitsubishi does the same thing as Fiat WRT safety ratings - do just enough to get a five star rating then keep selling the same poo poo for a decade or more. The 2013 NCAP rating still applies to the Mirage despite standards having dramatically changed since then.
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Sep 16, 2020 08:16
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