Our hire car, supposed to be compact/intermediate, was a Mitsubishi Eclipse – which I detest. It has two doors, alcantara trim on the seats, and people say “ooh, sporty!”. The acceleration isn’t too bad, either, although the vagaries of automatic gearboxes (it’s a hire car, what do you expect?) make it surprising hard to tell. However… the turning circle is so wide it makes U-turns tricky, and makes my Lotuses look good. Another element in common with old Lotuses is that there is an even worse view from the the three-quarter lines – which makes reversing out of parking spaces a considerable gamble. Just to be clear, it’s much worse than any old Lotus, and not in a way that could be considered endearing.
It also reacts very poorly to the wave rippled concrete on the I-10, setting up an uncomfortable back and front rocking at highway speeds. First time I experienced this, I thought I’d had a blow out. Along with that, when we picked it up, the tire pressure warning light was on; the local air hoses (mandatory free in CA, hurray!) don’t have any pressure gauge – so it’s hard to tell what’s going on, but the light goes off after driving, and doesn’t go off when you add air to the tire in reasonable quantities (we haven’t tried the unreasonable, yet).
As is very common with American hire cars, I haven’t found a trunk release lever apart from on the keys. On which subject, why do we always get two very bulky keys, both attached to a key ring that they can’t be removed from?
One last thing, which really only impacts people touring – the luggage area is exposed, in that you can see everything in the truck through the back window; that’s not secure, but may not matter to a typical buyer.
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