Fit And Forget
by David Finlay (29 Jul 05)

This seems a curious thing to be saying about a car which has only recently been introduced to the UK market by a major manufacturer, but there is nothing surprising, nothing innovative, nothing dramatic and nothing special about the Mitsubishi Lancer. You wouldn't boast about having one, and at times you might even forget what it was. It's designed to do a simple job and not to draw attention to the fact that it's doing it. And the funny thing is that it is so successful at all this that I really wouldn't mind having one.

The car tested here is the 1.6 four-door Equippe. That's the entry-level model, and it costs a usefully promotable £9999. But it couldn't fairly described as the cheap option because seven of the eight remaining cars in the range are cheap options too (the other one is the 2.0 Sport estate, which tries harder and succeeds less). If you want a 1.6-litre Lancer you might consider this one as effectively the only model there is, with just three available options.

None of the three is particularly appealing. You can spend £500 on automatic transmission, if you like automatic transmission. You also invest a further £500 by choosing the estate body style, though this really only makes sense if you intend to drive around with the rear seats down - if you don't, the luggage volume is actually inferior to that of the saloon at 344 litres versus 430 litres. Finally, an upgrade to the elegance trim level costs an extra £750, but this involves nothing more than the fitment of leather-faced seats.

There are Lancers with every combination of the above, and if you've been keeping score you will already have realised that the Elegance automatic estate costs £11,749 (nearly the same as the quicker, higher-specification Sport). Personally, I would stick with the Equippe manual saloon and find other ways of spending the extra £1750.

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