Both models offer wonderfully comfortable seats front and back, with ample leg, hip, shoulder and headroom for short and tall, little and big people alike. The fit and finish is first rate as are the choice of materials, better than the majority of Mitsubishi's small car rivals.
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| The fit and finish of the Sportback is first rate, and better than the majority of its competition. (Photo: Mitsubishi) |
All in all the new Sportback lives up to its name, except for one odd omission. The product team, in its wisdom, decided not to include a manual transmission. They did what? I'm sure you're as dumbfounded as I, but it's true. The engineers gave the car driving manners to easily embarrass most of its competition, but the 5-speed do-it-yourself shifter seems to have gone AWOL. Not only that but the 4-speed autobox that comes standard is nothing more than a simple PRD32L unit, hardly the stuff of winding mountain highway dreams. I hadn't been so let down since the prettiest girl in school wouldn't go out with me, even though I tempted her with Peter Frampton tickets.
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| Mitsubishi's Sportback is a superb sporty car, despite the lack of a manual transmission option. (Photo: Trevor Hofmann, Canadian Auto Press) |
Fortunately Mitsubishi's automatic included driver-adaptive technology, reading driver input to choose whether to hold a gear or shift. While this is a step up from bare basic automatics I would have appreciated the brand's excellent sequential automatic that comes in the Outlander that incidentally sports the same engine.
So in the end, if you're looking for a sporty car with loads of room and you were planning on equipping it with an automatic transmission anyway, you're in luck, as this one comes at no extra charge. It's a superb car with more positive attributes than negative, despite its shiftless personality.