What do you do when you’re in rural New York, have the keys to a brand-new car and a few hours to kill before a wedding? You drive! And then write about it. I’ve got the keys to a 2017 Mitsubishi Outlander ES for the next three days and similar to other posts, I always try to blog about my impressions.
This is actually the second time in the past few years I’ve piloted an Outlander. The first, was a white Outlander Sport that shuttled me all across Utah between five wild, national parks and a massive national monument called Grand Staircase-Escalante. Fancy sounding, right? That white Outlander Sport really impressed me for the ten days I had it. It was essentially everything I need in a vehicle to suit my outdoorsy, adventurous lifestyle I try so hard to live daily. Its all-wheel-drive system was excellent, it was fun to drive, got good gas mileage, wasn’t overly complex with high-tech gadgets and just looked cool. Sure I guess you could call it a cross-over, a word a absolutely cringe at when I hear it spoken, but the Outlander Sport has way more off-road cred than the competition. Not once did it get stuck going through a few muddy stream beds in Capitol Reef National Park, struggle going up the infamous Moki Dugway in a windy thunderstorm or feel out of place when bombing down some bumpy, desolate roads that carved deep into canyon country. But this Outlander I’ve been driving in Fishkill, NY is a complete shift away from the Sport model. It’s not as ‘off-roady’ or adventurous like its little brother, rather more suited for on-pavement daily driving you accomplish in a suburban or urban environment. It’s got three rows instead of two, front-wheel-drive, a sweet infotainment system, a bit more bling and chrome and loads of cargo space with the seats down. It also looks like a more traditional SUV rather than a lifted Lancer (which isn’t a horrible thing.) But let’s get to the basics.








I had a 5 seat version as a rental last year and had largely the same experience, although leaving it in normal mode on the transmission meant it was slow to let the engine rev more to get up hills etc in response to increased throttle openings. It would try to rely on the engine’s torque too much.
Otherwise everything was fine which seems to be Mitsubishi’s mission statement.
I don’t quite get the complaints about the folding procedure, that looks pretty standard for non-vans to me.
I also don’t understand the shape of the third row’s headrests.
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Yeah, that seat folding method is par for the course. Gotta get an FCA minivan to get anything slicker.