Mitsubishi Outlander: It’s a sport “cute” that gets the job done

Summer road trips always bring back memories of my youth: trips from my Sacramento boyhood home to the great Midwest to visit scores of cousins and uncles. As a youth, more than once I saw the Great Basin, the Great Salt Lake and the cornfields of Nebraska, from the backseat of a Chevy Bel Air station wagon (all filtered through my old man’s cigarette smoke).

To evoke those memories for me, and build some for my own son (without the blue smoke haze), I loaded up the new Mitsubishi Outlander for an extended weekend jaunt into the belly of Nevada’s Great Basin.

It is safe to say my son had it better than I. The Outlander is a compact, but comfortable ride – so comfortable in fact, that we saved a night’s lodging, reclined the seats and slept in vehicle. Our destination was the junction of U.S. highway 95 and U.S highway 6 – a ramshackle recent ghost town called Coaldale junction. Along the way we crossed the Sierra in Alpine County, stopped by Mono Lake and had one of the best chili-size burgers around at a coffee shop called Niceley’s in Lee Vining. Our purpose for this jaunt was to survey the rugged and 100 degree Nevada back country in the air conditioned comfort of the Outlander in search of wild horses.

The trip didn’t disappoint (although we spied a small herd from the two lane black top and not from the rugged 4 x 4 trails that we had followed). Nonetheless, the trip allowed us to put the Outlander through its paces as a bonafide off road vehicle. Yes, we actually engaged the four-wheel drive and this sturdy little Japanese import did not disappoint when we took it off pavement. It crawled over everything we could throw in front of it with steady handling and good manners.

On the highway we found a surprisingly quiet ride for a little SUV. The Outlander is a distant cousin to competitors from Honda and Toyota (the CR-V and the Rav4, respectively), but having tested those offerings I would give the nod to the little Outlander in this segment. For one thing a powerful new 3.0 liter six cylinder engine adds some power where it was needed. And this new powerplant didn’t really hamper the gas mileage. We observed 19 miles per gallon in mixed highway and off-road driving. Third-row seats are a hot commodity these days, and after Mitsubishi’s engineers extended the wheelbase nearly 2 inches and the overall length more than 4.5 inches, the Outlander folks then found a place to add these seats. The seat springs up fairly easily; however making anyone actually sit back there for a great distance, might not be the easiest task! With a sicker price around $30,000.00 the Outlander deserves a real look as a suburban kid and carpool hauler and as a decent offroad utility vehicle to boot.