My GF seems to really have the hots for this vehicle now. She saw a blue one on the highway recently and it looks like a sized up version of her Mirage. I know they are likely a very different vehicle but the appearance/styling is quite similar. I swear she was on the verge of wanting to trade in the Mirage for one of these when having the airbag recall done at the dealer and I talked her out of it. This is coming from the person who thought the Kia Rio was too large of a car and wanted something smaller so ended up with the Mirage. I told her the mileage on the Outlander Sport isn’t really bad for a vehicle of its size but isn’t going to come close to the Mirage which was one reason she picked that car.
I told her if we ever won the lottery, this could be the first thing she gets, but otherwise, it isn’t something she really needs. This isn’t exactly the best financial plan either but we only buy like one ticket per drawing and it has to be over $300 million for us to even consider it. We did splurge and buy like 5 tickets when Powerball was up to 1.4 billion or whatever but that was nothing compared to people dumping hundreds of dollars on the things at that time. You could tell the clerks were sick of seeing lottery tickets. Anyway, I know there is nothing rational about lottery tickets but spending $2 on a lottery ticket once in a blue moon seems like a better option that another larger car payment for her. If by some 1 in 292 million chance we won the lottery, blowing money on an un-needed car this inexpensive would be no biggie.
I looked up reviews on the Outlander Sport, including some on this site, and it looks like a basic reliable vehicle and a good value if you can sacrifice some of the luxury features found on many of the new cars these days. It gets a good safety rating, etc. but is considered “dated” for the lack of some modern features. I know she personally doesn’t like the touch screens, etc. so the “dated” reviews of the car might be a feature for her.
One interesting thing about these is that they are one of the few SUVs/crossovers offered these days with a manual transmission option. The only issue is that they only offer this as a total stripper in FWD only with the smallest 2.0L engine option. A FWD SUV is just a “grocery getter” if you ask me. This also comes in AWD with the larger 2.4 engine which all the reviews suggested getting. This doesn’t look like a bad car for $24,000 which is what one with these upgrades cost. This does come with the CVT transmission option.
It was funny when I asked the service dept. about the overall reliability of Mitsubishi while waiting for the recall to be performed. He said they were a change the oil and drive them type of car, especially compared to VW and Porsche, the other two brands sold there. I have to say I find it pretty funny seeing Mirages, which are one of the cheapest cars available, parked next to $140,000+ Porsches.
Didn’t she just get a new one? “How are ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm . . .” My advice is to trade and the sooner the better. This will not end well otherwise. IMHO people do not buy cars for the utility so what someone “needs” is of no bearing. Its what they “want” that’s important.
As you said, the manual has the small engine and is probably gutless. The auto has a CVT which I don’t like. For $24 you could get a CUV of a better reputed brand (RAV4, CRV, Tucson, Sportage, Escape), the list is long.
The only reason I would get an outlander would be getting a great deal on a used one.
I briefly looked at the one with the 3500 lb towing capacity as a possible tow vehicle but the premium fuel requirement: instant deal-breaker for me. It is the better financial plan to only buy ONE ticket per draw. You only need one to win, and the odds are so astronomical that buying more won’t measurably increase your chances of winning. I mostly stopped buying tickets after they changed the number matrix to make it harder to win, but I always ALWAYS get in when they do a “pool” at work. I do NOT want to watch 25 - 45 of my co-workers march out the door, millions in hand, while I’m left behind in the dungeon. . .
By that logic, i should have won the lottery 50 times if I buy 100x. I’m not interested in probability myself, but I cannot deny its usefulness. One of the new devices that probability had given us is solid state drive
BTW, my uncle traded in his Nissan quest for a Lexus RX300 fifteen years ago and promptly complained that it was much smaller than he thought. The utility in SUV is a misnomer
“It was funny when I asked the service dept. about the overall reliability of Mitsubishi while waiting for the recall to be performed. He said they were a change the oil and drive them type of car . . .”
You’re right . . . it IS funny
It’s funny that you would even believe for a second what the service advisor was telling you about the Outlander
If he knows it’s a loser SUV, he’s still going to tell you it’s a great vehicle
Service advisors often steer customers to the sales department, and get a slice of the pie
He’s got an agenda, plain and simple. They are salesmen
Maybe it does have excellent reliability . . . but you should find that out for yourself, by reading consumer reports, paying money to log onto the Mitsubishi technical website to read recalls, TSBs, etc. That’s where you’ll find the real “dirt”
carcomplaints.com is also an interesting website, but you kind of have to take it with a grain of salt. Interestingly enough, the years when CR has lots of black for a car’s reliability, that’s the year that carcomplaints.com has an extremely high number of complaints. There is some correlation, but you have to be able to sort through the garbage.
No offense, but I’ve seen way too many service advisors lie through their teeth, without batting an eyelash.
I’m not questioning your wisdom or expertise, I’m just advising you to not place too much value on that service advisor’s words
She talked about this car quite a bite but the last few days of work have had her driving a lot so the mileage of the Mirage seems to have talked some sense into her. She is usually very practical but seems to really like the Outlander Sport for some reason.
I checked carcomplaints about this car and it really doesn’t look like a bad one in terms of reliability. http://www.carcomplaints.com/Mitsubishi/Outlander_Sport/ If the worst complaint is a dead battery, it is doing pretty well if you ask me. Some of the other models such as those with the Chrysler 2.7L or some of the dud DDCT transmissions are a lot more interesting to look at.
As for the lottery, yes, buying two tickets DOES double your odds of winning. Buying one vs. zero increases your chances infinitely though. You could but millions of tickets and still not win or buy one and win it all. Lottery is really a waste of money when you get right down to it but one or two tickets on average a month is nothing compared to a car payment so it actually makes sense in this case.
I actually test drove a CVT Mirage just to do it and I didn’t think it was a bad performing option. I guess the reliability has been greatly improved but still am leery of these units. They seem to do OK in small cars like this because there isn’t enough torque to tear them up. I don’t know about something like the Outlander.
I really don’t know why she started talking about this so much. She has no need for an SUV and complained that too many of the cars she looked at were too big. I agree a test drive or two of something like this would knock this idea down.
I’ve no experience w/that model, but before writing any checks review what Consumer Reports says about it, reliability-wise. And ask your shop to provide a brief comparison on the cost of common service and repairs to other more common vehicles. for example, oil and filter change, fuel pump replacement, CV joint replacement, front side upper and lower suspension components replacement.
Yeah I’m a firm believer in random clusters being a part of a normal random distribution. So if you win today, go out and buy another ticket immediately.
One thing I usually do if a ticket is a winner of a small amount is to just put it back into more lottery tickets. I will admit this is a for sure way to lose all winnings! The way I look at it is that I was willing to lose that money from the start so I am no worse off than the original amount spent.
That $2 ticket can double to $4 in some cases. If there is no big winner, why not just get two more tickets with that amount? They never seem to win though. There is nothing rational about gambling of any kind so that is why I don’t got crazy with dozens of tickets like some people. Buying just one ticket increases your odds of winning by infinity. Buying more just increases those very small odds by a factor of the number of tickets purchased.
The Outlander Sport doesn’t look like a bad vehicle in terms of reliability and repair costs. That being said, there may be other better ones for similar money. Do any of the competing models offer AWD or 4WD for around $24,000? I think the best bet is to talk her out of it and tell her that is the first thing she can buy if we win the lottery. A few losing lottery tickets each year is a much better deal than another car payment if you ask me.
“First thing she can buy if we hit the lottery”. A Mitsubishi Outlander? Really? If you/she hits the POWERBALL? Why not just buy the whole Mitsubishi dealership? (Parodying that guy who used to do the razor commercials. . . ) “I liked their cars so much. . . I bought the dealership!”
". . . He said they were a change the oil and drive them type of car, especially compared to VW and Porsche. . . " Aren’t most of these econobox cars and family sedans basically just that nowadays? Change the oil, change the trans fluid, change the antifreeze now & again, rotate the tires, check the CV boots, ball joints, tie rods etc every 30,000 miles, and drive on!
I can’t proffer any advice regarding the GF. There’s good reason (many, actually) why I’ve stayed single. I hear many comedians say (to the males) you can be right, or you can be happy. And if you insist on being right too often, you’ll be right minus half your stuff. Of course in a girlfriend not wife situation, that wouldn’t apply.
Seems like so many people (male and female) are just perpetually unsatisfied with what they have and aren’t content unless they’re continually going deeper into debt to acquire more, or bigger and better, or new and improved cars, phones, gadgets / doo-dads, etc.
Well, ME, if I’ve got $20 to invest waste on lottery tickets (@$2.00/each i.e. 10 tickets) I would rather play one number spread out over 10 “draws” than play 10 numbers on one draw. That way I can draw out the fantasy over 5 weeks, imagining what I’m gonna do with the money. Same reason I never bother with scratch-offs - ya scratch 'em off, and yer done. You buy a $2 ticket on Sunday, you get to spend the winnings in your head until Wednesday night. 3 1/2 days of entertainment for $2. ( Don’t buy a cheeseburger or a soda you otherwise would have bought and you come out even.)
I don’t know if they have it in Missouri, but some states have a “Pick 6” “Multi-Match” type game which is a tier below the Powerball / MegaMillions. You get 3 lines of 6 numbers for $2. That’s a more fun game (in my opinion) because sometimes you actually do win your $2 back! Usually the jackpot starts at something like half a million, which is more convenient because you’d be more likely to claim that prize and stay under the radar, and your odds are “only” like 1 in 2 or 3 million instead of 1 in 290 million.
A funny thing (sad funny not ha-ha funny) is every time someone at work has a death in the family they pass around a sympathy card and take up a collection. If they do the collection on payday they might collect $150. But when the lotto jackpot gets over $400 million, they have no problem at all gathering $300 - $400 for the lotto pool. And if nobody hits the jackpot, they easily gather ANOTHER $400 - $500+ for the next round, even if its far from payday!
PS- I had NEVER personally bought a lottery ticket until a few years ago. After that group of meatpackers out west won that big jackpot by “pooling” their money, they started doing that at my job whenever the jackpot would get big, and I got sucked into buying tickets from time to time. I’m actually glad they changed the matrix to make it harder to win, it saves me money because now I don’t buy tickets except when the jackpot gets huge, and of course the work “pools”.
Consumer Reports has no data on the reliability of these vehicles, simply because they sell in such incredibly low numbers. That being said, CR did offer a broad statement, something along the lines of…Mitsubishis seem to hold-up reasonably well…or something to that effect.
They absolutely hated the way that the vehicle drove, but apparently felt that they are fairly reliable.
My GF is normally not that way at all. For example, she needed to get internet at her place and I figured out it would be cheaper to get it through a cell phone data plan, rather than pay for a service such as cable or DSL. Sure, she is limited on the amount of data per month but she didn’t need much. The problem was that she was using the most basic flip phone on the market and although she had available data, it was unusable with the phone. She didn’t want to get a better phone and I basically had to force her into a smart phone. There was a phone I had looked at for myself at Wal-Mart a few months ago. It was a Nokia Windows phone and selling for $119 or so. I had looked at the reviews and it was a very solid phone but none of the apps I needed for my business would function on that phone. It got great reviews for call quality, reception, data speed, etc. though. Anyway, I went to Wal-Mart and the phone had just been marked down to $25 on clearance. She bought one and was all apprehensive and made me switch everything over. Anyway, she liked it quite well by the next day and asked if she would ever be able to find another one at this price. I told her probably not unless she got lucky so wanted to return to Wal-Mart and buy a spare. Anyway, there was only one left by the time she got there. She loves the phone and my dad also got one at the same time. Both are still working great.
I think she would lose interest in buying an Outlander real quick if she saw what it would cost in additional payment. I did at least talk her into cancelling the extended warranty she bought on the Mirage. It was largely redundant with the warranty that came with the car.
She also wanted a small car which is what the Mirage fit. I don’t think she would like driving something that big either.
Yes, Missouri has a similar game to what you describe. It is just called “Lotto”. It has the same number of numbers to pick from as Powerball except that there are fewer possibilities. I think Powerball goes up to 69. This one only goes to 39 or something. Anyway, it starts at like $1 million but has much better odds of winning. There is another one like this called “Show Me Cash” that typically has wins in the hundreds of thousands of dollars but even higher odds of winning. Both these only cost a dollar compared to Powerball and the Lotto one gives you two chances to win. We have bought some of these a time or two when they are up and the big two (Powerball and Mega Millions) were way down. Some actually won a free ticket. There are also games that have 3 or 4 numbers and some are drawn twice daily. I haven’t really paid attention to these as well as Keno which is like an instant draw game with picks every 5 minutes or so. Is see this in a lot of bars.
Lottery must be a really big deal all over. People were actually driving over from Illinois to buy Missouri tickets when there was a budget issue and IL wasn’t paying out on the winnings. The number of MO tickets purchased really went up while this was going on. The thing I don’t like about lottery is that many of the people who play buy WAY too many tickets, neglecting to take care of other things such as their kids. I have been in line behind people buying hundreds of dollars worth of all sorts of tickets. Then you look at their car is it is total junk. They might have kids not getting fed. With all that money they spent on tickets, it would have easily covered the payment on a new car. I have to say I agree with this article: http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/15/opinions/cevallos-powerball-lottery-hypocrisy/ The government may act like gambling is so bad except when THEY sponsor it.
Re: the extended warranty on the Mirage: Yeah, they tried that one on me too, but there really wasn’t much they could even say since the regular warranty is so long. They offered to extend the bumper-to-bumper out to the 10/100 length of the powertrain for an extra $8xx and something dollars, which I politely declined. Seemed like an o.k. offer, but I’m always suspicious of warranties anyway, as has been discussed ad nauseum here, there’s always something in the fine print that excludes whatever your claim might be.
I’ve never bothered with pick 3, pick 4, match 5, etc. If its not enough money to change my life in some meaningful way, I’m just not interested. I need at least $500k and preferably $1 million+ when you figure a million is only half a million after taxes.
We’ve got casinos going up now, (doesn’t everyone?) and I often hear my colleagues bragging about how they won $100, $300, $225 etc at the casino. (To myself) I always think, “SO WHAT? Ya still gotta come to work tomorrow!”
Wow! They dinged her or $1800 or so on the extended warranty and tried to do the same for me! $800 probably wasn’t a bad deal. What was the brand? Her’s was Zurich or something like that. Basically the balance of the warranty shortens her loan by quite a few payments, likely almost a year. I think her warranty went out to 120,000 miles.
There has been no more mention of the Outlander Sport. I am sure it isn’t a terrible car but for that money, I am sure there are others better. She just took a liking to it for some reason. Her Mirage is the “Mini Me” and the Outlander Sport is the big version. What other small SUVs offer AWD/4WD for about $24,000?
Honestly Consumer Reports may be dinging a perfectly good car on the ride. I don’t find the Mirage to have a bad ride. Sure, it isn’t a Lexus or Mercedes but what do you expect out of a brand new car for $10,000? It is sure better than most pickup trucks and a 20+ year old Geo Metro or Ford Festiva.
Yeah, I have only messed with scratchers or Pick 3, 4, etc. when another ticket won something. Again, the money spent on that original ticket was something I just planned to throw away anyway so don’t mind putting $5 or $10 in winnings into other tickets I normally wouldn’t buy. Yes, I will admit this is a very effective way of throwing away these small winnings.
There are some scratchers that actually win several million dollars here in MO. The problem is that they cost $20 or $30. There is NO WAY I would dump that kind of money into a stupid lottery ticket. If it had good odds of winning back at least the amount I put in, that would be one thing. I have never looked at the odds (published online) but don’t think I would ever buy one of these unless I had a really good chance of at least winning the original amount back.
One way I rationalize buying lottery tickets is that when the amount reaches the denominator of the odds of winning, it isn’t that bad of a deal. Of course you have taxes and if you take the cash vs. years of payments, it is less. I personally like it when the amount accounting for those other factors is larger than the denominator in the odds of winning. For example, Powerball has something like 1/292 million odds. So when it gets up to $300 million or so, that is when I start paying attention.
