HUGE sale on the 2015 Mitsubishi Mirage

General Discussion
181

@jtsanders , you make legitimate points. Hammering out that final price is going to be like hostage negotiations. I’ve heard and read so many horror stories over the years about dealers tacking on extra fees at the last possible minute. What matters to me is the amount I have to make out the check for. If they want to sell me the car for $1 and charge me a $10,000 dealer horses**t fee, $4,000 for the air in the tires, and $3,999 for scotchgarding - well, to me that’s the same as charging me $16,981 + 6% state sales tax, which is really how it OUGHT to be done.

I seriously hesitate to commit to buying a car before I can test drive it. What if the shifter on the Fit is ‘crunchy’ like the one on the Mirage? It’ll be too late then to go back and buy the Mirage instead.

I guess that’s why I’ll insist on a written contract, so they don’t hit me with the scotchgarding - vin etching, ziebarting, extended warranty, special insurance packages they try to push on you in the so-called “F&I” office. I want to be able to back out at the last possible minute if they try that hard-sell on me and act like I’m obligated to buy any of that crap.

182

IT OCCURS TO ME - never mind the manual transmission, come 20 years from now it might not even be possible to buy a CAR! You’ll probably just tell your phone where you want to go, and a driver-less ‘pod’ will pull up in front of your house, you get in, and it whisks you away to your destination, much like those Die-bold canisters they use at the bank drive thru window.

And something good will be forever lost. I don’t know about any of you, but I really like to ‘wander’. I enjoy driving around when I have time off from work, as Willie Nelson sings, “. . . seeing things that I might never see again, and I can’t wait to get on the road again.”

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@Ed Frugal
Old habits and ideas die hard, but I’d rethink this manual transmission thing. In years past, that’s all I drove, too. I started out driving with a VW bug, wore it out, bought a brand new one and wore it out, too.

Now for years I have owned automatics, lots of them. I wouldn’t go back for anything.

If I want nostalgia I drive my 4-speed manual Fiero SE. Yippee! Then I go back to enjoying driving my automatics.
CSA

184
You'll probably just tell your phone where you want to go, and a driver-less 'pod' will pull up in front of your house, you get in, and it whisks you away to your destination, much like those Die-bold canisters they use at the bank drive thru window.

I think individuals will still own cars…but I agree they’ll be driverless. In 30-40 years driving a vehicle will be a lost art.

185

The other thing that might be coming one of these days is OBDIII technology. I hear that this will give you only a certain time to fix your “check engine” light and then start phoning home through a system like Onstar, then you start getting tickets/fines for not having an emissions compliant vehicle. I kinda think there would be lots of backlash against this but you never know. That would be one reason to buy one of the newest older style (OBD II) cars available at the time.

I think lots of newer small cars will be going to the CVT. This doesn’t seem to work well in high torque applications but seems OK for smaller cars that won’t stress them too much. Personally I thought the DDCT transmission was a great idea when we started seeing them. The problem is that there have been lots of problems with them. Look at cars such as the Focus and the Dart. I know someone with a Focus currently on the 3rd transmission. It is almost like this is part of the 30,000 mile maintenance schedule for them. Ford keeps extending the warranty for them but if they ever get close to going out of warranty, they plan to dump this car and FAST. I suspect that many of these issues are just growing pains and not an overall design issue. These things are basically a computer controlled manual transmission. There is no parasitic torque converter to rob power and mileage.

I personally like a manual transmission. I know some do not. As for someone at a shop driving it and ruining the clutch, that is always a possibility. You mentioned that a clutch could be fried in an afternoon. I think that it could actually be much shorter, like 30 seconds or a minute, if you get someone really bad.

So you cannot even find a Honda Fit to test drive in the manual? I am surprised they are that rare but would want to test drive one for sure before signing on the lines. As for the Mirage, the deal on it may be running out. This month ends in only a few more days so you need to make your decision. Ones left may either go back to a more normal price, they may extend the deal, or make it even better to blowout the few remaining ones.

I believe I posted this before but I have seen references on the forum to people changing out their manual transmission fluid after the initial break in with Redline MTL. It seems the manual transmission in these really does well on that fluid and is smoother.

As for the LG TV, I would be irritated about it going out right after the warranty too. Now one thing I do see quite a lot is when people don’t have their equipment properly protected from surges and brownouts. Anything important I have goes on a battery backup UPS. This keeps the power stable and these things are worth their weight in gold. I live in an area where there are lots of weather events and unstable power because of it. I see fried electronics on almost a weekly basis. Now the owner will be all mad at Dell, LG, etc. because it broke. I look at it and realize a drink has been spilled down into their Dell laptop. I explain this to them but they are mad at Dell because the unit broke. Also, they are mad because it got a virus. This has nothing to do with the brand but you cannot tell them that. Then there will be a TV where it was just plugged right into the wall. IT won’t turn on and the first thing I see/smell when I open the unit is a fried power supply unit. I also see lots and lots of fried mainboards in TVs. People will have the power plug protected on a a surge strip/UPS but their satellite box or whatever is left unprotected so it gets fried by that coming in through the audio/video cables, etc. Of course you tell the owner this but BRAND X of TV is still junk because it broke. The best of the best will get ruined this way. You may or may not have had this happen but that is just something you see on a daily basis working on electronics.

I have never really been a fan of the cheap TV brands like Hisense, Element, Viore (just saw one of those) as they do tend to break at a more frequent rate. On the other hand they are cheap enough to be considered disposable when they break. Vizio would be the lowest I would go. Their cheaper ones litter dumps and recycling yards but some of their better lines are actually nice TVs if you ask me. I doubt I would buy one but they aren’t horrible either. There are only like 3 makers of many parts in these things so many brands share common parts made by someone else like the panel, signal board, etc. The problem with the cheaper ones is that some of those models can have like 12 different combinations of parts. You would assume that one model of TV would have the same part across all of them but it is easily 3 or more possibilities. You have to open the TV to find out which one you got. This is especially a problem with Vizio from what I have seen.

186

@“common sense answer” , “If I want nostalgia I drive my 4-speed manual Fiero SE. Yippee!” I thought about keeping my Festiva around for such a reason, but its falling apart. Time to let it go. In a few years I want to get a workhorse pickup truck, and that will have to be automatic because I plan to use it for a tow vehicle. I am considering hanging-it-up with the manual transmissions though. I like to be different from what everybody else does, though. Because “nobody” wants a manual anymore, makes me want one even more.

@MikeInNH ". . . In 30-40 years driving a vehicle will be a lost art. " And I think that’s a tragedy. Or maybe I just have Old Fart Syndrome. I guess we’re all products of the times we live in. People 100+ years ago didn’t have cars either. Most people lived out their entire lives within a 10 square mile area, or less.

Upon further consideration, people in rural areas will probably still own cars. “The System” is already guiding people away from car ownership. Things like Leases, ZipCars, insurance company Tracking Chips they claim allow you to only pay for the insurance you use. . . instead of owning a ‘car’ folks will be ‘allowed’ to pay for the transportation they use, so to speak. These driver-less pods could be like propane tanks or deposit bottles, you exchange a depleted one for a full one.

@cwatkin -“The other thing that might be coming one of these days is OBDIII technology. I hear that this will give you only a certain time to fix your “check engine” light and then start phoning home through a system like Onstar, then you start getting tickets/fines for not having an emissions compliant vehicle. I kinda think there would be lots of backlash against this but you never know. That would be one reason to buy one of the newest older style (OBD II) cars available at the time.”

I couldn’t agree MORE. I think it bears repeating, so I quoted the whole paragraph. :smile: Emissions compliance isn’t the only thing it could do. It could monitor your speed and automatically charge traffic fines to your credit / debit card. George Orwell’s ‘1984’ world gets closer and closer.

Certain people, politically, rant and rave to no end about government overreach, but overreach in the private sector hardly gets mentioned. Apple, Microsoft, Verizon, AT&T, Google, etc. track our every move down to the centimeter, everything we look at on the internet; everything we buy and when gets tracked, increasingly, through use of debit / credit cards and especially these bogus ‘loyalty’ cards which have proliferated like an aggressive cancer through the marketplace.

And the majority of people feed into the destruction of their own privacy and freedom. Prime example, people who post private details of their lives on facebook. I believe that my generation - generation X, those born between 1964 and 1982, will be the last generation of Americans to truly understand the concepts of privacy and freedom. Its all being eroded away, one iPhone, loyalty card, and RFID chip at a time. . .

187

Well, it looks like if the manual transmission is going to be the deal breaker I’m going to have to jump on the Mirage, and fast. My luck; I’ll call the guy back and that’ll be gone too :angry:

Now I’m kinda pixxed at Honda for deceptive advertising and arrogance. They know they’ve got a product people want so you’ve gotta buy on THEIR terms.

I’m thinking about buying the Mirage to spite Honda . . . and of course save $7,000 in the process. . . talk about a win-win.

188

Honda will lose a lot of sleep if you don’t buy a Fit.

189

If I’m going to settle for less and not get exactly what I want I think I’d rather settle for less and not get exactly what I want with an extra seven grand in my pocket. Closer to eight grand really when you factor in the cost of the CVT transmission. $19+ grand for a CAR?! Come on now! If it starts and runs and keeps up with traffic on the highway, you got a/c a decent radio and cruise control what the heck else could I POSSIBLY NEED??¿??

And 3 days after I buy the Mirage I’ll get a call from Honda - guess what just showed up on the lot?

190

@“Ed Frugal”

What if you buy that mirage to spite Honda, and you wind up DISLIKING the Mirage :fearful:

then what . . . ? :cry:

If that were to happen, would you tell us the “truth” . . . ?! :wink:

191

I like driving manuals myself and am still searching to buy one commuter car for cheap, but my wife says she should be able to drive the car too and refuses to drive a manual.

As far as most of us having regrets if driving becomes obsolete; well maybe we are getting to be too old school. I wonder what happened to the old type writers and their “operators”.

192

I think Ed would tell us the truth but it would take 8 paragraphs to do so.

193

Maybe the driverless pods wouldn’t be such a bad idea. You call them on the phone using an app. This way you can text and drive all you want and not be an idiot on the road.

Anyone upgrading from a Festiva to a Mirage will not dislike the Mirage. This isn’t to say they wouldn’t have liked the Fit more but a Mirage is a significant upgrade from the Festiva or Metro. Also, is the Fit almost twice as nice as the Mirage? Remember you are paying for that Honda name as well as the other features.

If you get one, expect crappy gas mileage on the first tank or two because it is still breaking in. By crappy, I mean 35+ mpg and not 45+ mpg. The forum indicates it doesn’t really break in for 1500 miles or so. I am about halfway to that point as I have been using the Geos and my trucks because of various reasons. I either needed the truck to haul or was going to a nasty place and didn’t want to haul dirty junk in the new car.

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Ed: For $1500 bucks I have a 1992 Geo Metro for sale. It is a beater but runs well and has very little rust. It has had synthetic oil since I owned it. Anyway, this might be the even cheaper option. It has some issues which can all be fixed but the main mechanical stuff like the engine and transmission all are good. The issues are HVAC, door lock, etc. related. That would be the cheap option for you! It is a 5 speed manual and all the synchros are good. Synchros are a weak spot on these.

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@db4690 & @“VOLVO V70” - Yeah, I’ll tell you the truth. For anyone who’s read through all my ranting & raving, I think I owe you that much at least. (You deserve to be collecting royalties by now for putting up with me :wink: but don’t go waiting by the mailbox tho. . . ) You’ll think @otterhere has re-incarnated if/when I go off about buying the wrong car. :trollface:

Believe it or not, I’m trying to refine my postings here over time to be brief and clear. I know it gets tedious reading long posts but I do tend to be long-winded. Maybe I can be a motivational speaker someday! :open_mouth:

Brief summary, visited another Honda dealer last evening, was told no manual Fits in pipeline, yes they building them in central Mexico. . . for Mexican / South American markets. None coming here due to supply & demand, they get maybe 1 person in a year asking for a manual. My response: That’s FINE, but why manual listed so prominently on Honda.com. Them: So they can advertise a lower starting MSRP. $17,000+ MSRP won’t draw as much traffic to showroom. ME: Well that’s false advertising, the old bait-n-switch, if I CANNOT purchase the product, it shouldn’t be listed for sale on the website, I wasn’t looking at Honda of Mexico, I was looking at Honda of America.

Few other tidbits, Honda rarely discounts except sometimes Accords and Civics when inventory piles up. Honda.com prominently features the new Ridgeline, (which looks like a real pickup truck :smile: ) but they’ve pushed back the release date at least 3 times, salesman said they get folks in every day looking for the new Ridgeline and he has to say, "well, they’re coming in whenever Honda finally gets around to shipping them. . . " And I got the same line I heard at another dealer back in 2014, “There’s only $600 profit built into each Honda Fit, so don’t expect much of anything in the way of discounts.” :frowning:

Now I’m kinda perceiving Mitsubishi as the scrappy underdog and Honda as the big, indifferent corporate thug. They know they’ve got cars people want to buy and the reputation for reliability, so customers be damned, buy or don’t buy, we don’t care because if you don’t buy someone else will. Same kind of hubris which brought down the Big 3 over decades. Even CR says Honda’s legendary reliability has slipped in recent years. . .

And then they overcharge you for all those accessories. $143 floor mats?! $78 cargo organizer i saw a commercial for for $29.95. $259 for the cargo cover that is included on the Mirage. And the salesman gets a twinkle in his eye when he says, "Don’t forget, installation costs EXTRA! :grin: "

Buying a car is a BIG, IRREVERSIBLE decision! Can’t just take it back like a toaster you bought from Walmart if you change your mind. No wonder I spent so many years patching up my old cars to avoid this moment of truth.

Gonna call that Mitsubishi salesman tomorrow and tell him go ahead send for the one we discussed if its still available. My luck, it won’t be, then I’m back to square one. :confounded:

Plan “B”: Go harass speak to a salesman about that Scion iA. Consumer Repts 2016 (that’s THIS YEAR) buying guide lists “Highs” as: “Slick manual shifter, fuel economy, handling.”

As I said, I got the brakes fixed and a pair of good used tires on the Festiva. I’m confident I can ride out the summer if need be.

P.S. - Its like a version of “Murphy’s Law”, there’s no manual trans Fits within 2,000 miles of here, but 3 days after I buy the Mirage, a whole truckload of them will show up at the dealer in my backyard, and they’ll be selling them below invoice since nobody wants a manual. Isn’t that how the world usually works? :confounded:

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@cwatkin , re: the driverless pods, probably a good thing for the millennials and beyond. A tragedy to me. 100 years ago there were probably middle aged guys pixxed off about giving up their horse-n-wagons.

“Anyone upgrading from a Festiva to a Mirage will not dislike the Mirage. This isn’t to say they wouldn’t have liked the Fit more but a Mirage is a significant upgrade from the Festiva or Metro. Also, is the Fit almost twice as nice as the Mirage? Remember you are paying for that Honda name as well as the other features.”

True, true, and true. Maybe I’d like a Lexus or a Maybach twice as much as a Fit, but is it worth the extra $$$$$?

I’m disillusioned by the aggressive borderline obnoxious behavior of the first Honda salesman, and what I perceive as deceptive marketing by Honda. I said before I wish I could buy the FIt from the Mitsubishi salesman. Aw, heck, you say that shifter smooths out once it breaks in, and if it somehow breaks, I’ve got that looooong warranty to cover it, at least in theory?

“For $1500 bucks I have a 1992 Geo Metro for sale” For $1,500 bucks I could patch up my 1993 Ford Festiva to last another year! Plus i think you’re at least 800 miles away from me. . . I think you’re gonna have to wait until gas prices spike up over $3 a gallon to get $1,500 bucks for a '92 Metro. Sell it to a pizza delivery guy. I swear, they were waving me to roll down the window at red lights and asking me if I wanted to sell back when gas was $4 a gallon! Seriously.

P.S. - Come July / August, when I start the car and that cold air conditioned air hits me in the face, I can assure you I will not dislike the Mirage. . . :relieved:

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“think Ed would tell us the truth but it would take 8 paragraphs to do so.”

…and then he and cwatkin can take up 20 pages of this forum with what could have/should have been a personal dialogue carried out via direct messages…

:wink:

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The Scion iA is the old Mazda 2. This doesn’t look like a bad car but everyone said that for the price, you should just get the bigger and nicer Mazda 3. The mileage penalty is not large for this upgrade either. I personally think Mazda makes a great car so it might be an option for you.

Your experience with the Honda dealer sounds like the Kia dealer here. I went in looking for the most basic Rio they had which is actually a nice car if you ask me. My GF wanted the basic model with the manual transmission. They let me test drive the 6 speed manual one and it was nice. Then they started the whole we can see what the old trade is worth, etc. And then if you buy it tonight you get 0% financing for 60 months… I asked them for a low dollar number like 3 times and always got a “we well see”. Then I get home that night after my GF had purchased the Mirage and had a flyer from the same dealer advertising the Rio for $12,700.

I wasn’t going to call them back since a car had been bought but they called me. I told them that I had gotten a flyer in the mail and that this would have eliminated all the nonsense at the dealer and possibly gotten them a sale had I gotten this a day earlier. His response was “That price is on the base model with the manual transmission and nothing else.” I told him this is what we wanted and actually test drove one of those. Basically they are using those low MSRP cars as bait.

The Mirage also comes with floor mats too. I am getting some of the heavy duty rubber ones because I am always in rough and muddy areas. The OEM upgrade ones cost me just shy of $100. I also got splash guards for behind the wheels to try and protect from rock chips for about $120 total. I do lots of gravel road driving and live on a gravel road myself.

People with the Mirage have had very few issues and if they do, Mitsubishi has bent over backwards to solve the problem. This is quite the opposite of the big 3 and Honda from what you are saying. I know Toyota has also had some issues like this lately and everyone knows about GM. Their warranty is the best in the industry.

My dealer was able to transfer both my car and my GF’s from another dealer. They had a white base model manual on the lot but neither of us wanted a white car. It might still be there but is in Springfield, MO. Where are you located? None of the cars came from more than 250 or so miles away when they were transferred in.

Odds are that a truckload of 2015 manuals WILL NOT arrive at your local dealer. There are no more 2015 models in the pipe so they are being CLEARANCED before the arrival of the 2017 models. If you want a Mirage from 2015 with the great price, negotiate a deal and pay money upfront to get one moved to your dealer. Otherwise you WILL NOT get one from this model year.

The other option is to wait for the 2017 model to arrive. You won’t get a great deal like the one they are offering on the 2015 but will get a nicer car for a similar price. The improvements I care about include an improved valvetrain for more power and longer life, better brakes, and better handling. There are a few other appearance/finish improvements too.

Remember this deal was for the MONTH OF MARCH which is almost over! If you want one, you need to do this today or tomorrow. Remember there isn’t really any markup on these cars either.

Yes, I also hate buying new cars and that is one reason for the old clunkers but the Mitsubishi place I worked with was very good overall. The local Kia place was a different story overall and is typical of car buying.

199

@Ed Frugal
"I like to be different from what everybody else does, though. Because “nobody” wants a manual anymore, makes me want one even more."

Consider Consumer Reports latest new car picks and how this could help with a decision to go with an automatic transmission and still be different from what everybody else does.

In the 10 worst new cars chosen (subcompact models) the Mitsubishi Mirage was a winner! Apparently they found the vehicle to be too small and felt that the 3-banger engine vibrated too much. (This couldn’t have anything to do with the sale, right?)

Think about it. How many people do you know that want the worst of anything? That would set you apart from the crowd if you bought one and you would have bragging rights, too!

I’m jealous, already. :wink:

CSA

200

The Mirage wins bragging rights in all the new car reviews to avoid! The USA Today article is nothing new.

CONSUMER reviews are always on the other end of the spectrum. I love this Edmunds review. http://www.edmunds.com/mitsubishi/mirage/2015/hatchback/review/ Edmunds give it a D while the consumers give it a 4.6 out of 5 star rating. This is quite typical of this car and others such as the Versa, etc. It is nothing new and there are very few fair reviews of this car by the professionals.

Fair reviews are:

The 3 cylinder engine isn’t the smoothest but none of the 3 cylinders really are. It runs like a Mercedes compared to the old unbalanced Geo Metro. As for being slow and underpowered, I don’t get that one. Sure, it isn’t a Corvette but found myself having no problem meeting or exceeding the speed limit and passing trucks on uphill grades.

I don’t think this sale is because of lackluster sales numbers. This car outsold even the best expectations of Mitsubishi execs. I think they are just clearing out old stock for the new model year.

Something else for the cheapskates… I don’t know if this was mentioned but this car REQUIRES synthetic oil of the 0W20 weight. I am going with the Mobil 1 EP as it is $25 for a 5 quart jug at Wal-Mart. This car only takes 3.1 quarts so once you buy two changes, the third one is free with the leftover oil. I few on the forum have done oil analysis on various oils and this is the best one in the cheaper range of the oils. The Mobil 1 AFE is a little more common and the same price but the EP variety appears to be a better blend.