Sorry it took me so long to post this. Lately I’ve barely had time to read everybody else’s thoughtful posts, let alone post some of my own.
Bought my new car with 82 miles on the odometer Friday, April 1, 2016. I thought about @meanjoe75fan’s comment about “paralysis by analysis”. After having put about a month into research, test drives, etc and with other non-car related deadlines bearing down on me, it was time to make an executive decision, so to speak.
I’m gonna try to avoid making this an unreadable 35 paragraph post and keep it brief and post additional comments in coming days as I think of them.
SO - I ended up buying. . . (drumroll please). . . The Mitsubishi Mirage.
I did not buy the Mirage to spite Honda, as I sarcastically suggested on another thread. Basically three reasons I chose the Mitsubishi Mirage over the Honda Fit.
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Once I realized I couldn’t get everything I wanted regardless of what I bought, I decided to go for the $avings!
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Most of the ‘accessories’ I wanted which cost extra on the Fit were already included on the Mirage.
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The savings I initially calculated to be $7,000 and I wanted to save $8,000. In a backhanded way I got my savings. The Mitz dealer wouldn’t come down on his price, BUT, come to find out, the Fit would have cost about a thousand more than I had calculated.
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I figured this would be my last chance at a manual transmission car. I expect this will be the last one I ever own.
I really did make it out the door for under $11,500 without any hassle. The standard warranty is so long there wasn’t really much they could hit me with in the F&I office. They offered to extend the bumper-to-bumper out to the 10/100 of the powertrain warranty for like $800 and something dollars, and after I said ‘no’, it was ‘sign here, here are your license plates’. I gotta tell ya, outdated vehicles or no, if this is how they’re selling Mitsubishis, they oughta be in business for a long time, compared to the Honda salesman, who seemed to think he could hypnotize me into signing the paper by having an impromptu staring contest.
So I bought the ES as opposed to the DE. Originally this was to get the color I wanted, but I procrastinated so long it was no longer available. I think I got one of the last 3 Mirages in my state with a manual transmission. I did want the cruise control and the 6 way adjustable seat and was willing to pay the extra $636 dollars to get these features. In the past 2 weeks I have also come to appreciate the fog lights, and I will admit that the alloy wheels are growing on me. Its a nice looking car. I’m referring to it as ‘snowflake’! Can you guess what color I got?
So here is the icing on the cake, though the numbers are preliminary. Bought my first tank of gas earlier this week. 347 miles on the odometer, car barely took 7.003 gallons of gas. That comes to 49.550 MPG. Seems too good to be true. Perhaps the dealer topped off the tank when I took delivery. Or perhaps the initial tank of gas wasn’t diluted with ethanol like the local gas is. I’ll have to measure my mpg over several more tanks, but that will take awhile because you gotta drive a car like that a LOT before it needs gas. A good problem to have. 49 1/2 miles per gallon?! And just like that, I forgot what was that other car I was looking at?
I really don’t feel like I settled for second best. I got a brand new car and I KNOW its never been abused, neglected, or ragged out. I think we’re gonna have a lot of fun together in the coming years exploring the hiways ‘n’ biways of the eastern United States.