2004 Mitsubishi Galant LS Road Test

What a Great Car!

Just why there aren't more Galants on the road is a mystery to me. I suppose, in a land that follows the automotive status quo

While driving around downtown, I wonder to myself why there aren't more Mitsubishi Galants on the road. Then it dawns on me, maybe it's just too good to be popular. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

more often than taking a chance on something new it only makes sense that Mitsubishi's midsize, and soon to be flagship sedan is something of rarity. It's just too good to be popular.

It's like that with really good artists, great bands and the best movies. I mean, I go to the art museum hoping to be taken away into someone's creative muse and am often left feeling flat. Then in some out of the way restaurant downtown I'm blown away with some unknown artist's incredibly lonely rendering of a gateway to a dark courtyard. I get into my car, turn on the radio and one vapid song follows another, nothing new, nothing that stirs the soul. And then Tom Waits announces a concert in my town and it sells out in fifteen minutes. I tell a colleague how upset I am not to get tickets and he looks at me baffled, "Who's Tom Waits?" The same could be said of any number of superb musicians that will never get played on the airwaves of commercial radio stations. In the same context, you've got to stay up ruddy late to catch anything Peter Sellers did on TV. "The Party", "Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and

With all it has going for it, why isn't the Galant LS or GTS the most popular midsize car on the market? (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press)

Love the Bomb", "Being There", or just about any "Pink Panther" film is better than most anything else that program directors choose to run on primetime.

So here I am, parking one of the best sedans in the midsize segment on the busiest street in my home town, while passersby do multiple double-takes as if they've never seen the car before. There's something wrong here. Its got new-edge styling in spades, a high quality soft-touch interior with stylish surfaces and extremely cool blue backlit lighting, tons of top-tier features, more front and rear passenger space than anything in its class, incredibly comfortable seats at all positions, those in the back at the very top of its class, one of the largest trunks in its category as well, and an ideally balanced performance, refinement combination that should make most rivals shrink away in embarrassment, so why isn't the Galant LS or GTS the most popular midsize car on the market?