(Warning - this blog post may contain American English)
Unfortunately I only got to drive this car for a fortnight ("A Fortnight? What's that? A night in a fort?" No, Marissa...) this summer as they seemed to be pretty popular at Avis car rentals. For the first part of my trip to the US this year I had a Mitsubishi Eclipse Spyder. Which was fun, but a little small and... well, a bit... OK, it's a girl's car.
Roll on the American muscle.
OK, I should point out here that this isn't a true muscle car - it only has a 4.0 litre V6 engine under the hood. Yes, it's the base model.... Boo, Avis! Boo!
Anyway, it's a different car to drive. It feels heavy, like my normal 3-Series, but unfortunately, the live rear axle and the cheap suspension make it a bit wallowly. There's some exposed bodywork in places that you'd never see in a European car either. It's clearly cheaply built from cheap, old technology. And it doesn't corner all that well. And, jeez, I'm sure I had to fill that thing up twice as much as the Eclipse. However. However. It's a Mustang and I'm in California! San Francisco! This is the car Steve McQueen drove in Bullitt (Well, close)! I challenge anyone to drive this car with the sun streaming down, some old school rock like Steppenwolf playing and not immediately forgive it all its flaws and head off down the highway grinning ear to ear. I certainly did. I started grinning as as I turned the key, the whole car rocking from side to side as the 244 cubic inch engine powers into life. It really does! It has an official rating of 200 bhp (yeah, yeah, BMW and Honda can get 200 bhp out of a 4 cylinder 2 litre, I know) and 0 - 60 in 7.3 seconds. It's a quick car, for not a lot of money. Well, as long as you don't turn any corners. It's not so hot there.
I started grinning even more when I got out of the parking garage and into the sun and put the roof down. As you can see, this one's a convertible. Not the most practical (the handling suffers even more, but it's not too detrimental - I imagine most would argue it couldn't get much worse), but I thought it was cool, especially in the California sun. It also enabled Dukes of Hazard style getaways. One of my abiding memories of this car is at midnight as the staff of GW Stoneridge and myself 'escaped' from the Livermore In-n-Out, burgers clutched close, leaping into the car in unison and flooring it , tyres squealing, avoiding the California Highway Patrol (OK, the last bit about the Highway patrol is a Foxtonism). Ah, happy days. You also feel a million dollars driving this car up the hills of San Francisco, CRUMP-CRUMP, as you hit the intersections and the gradient changes. I just wish there was a black Dodge Charger I could have been chasing.
In short, this car is crude, unrefined, inefficient, not especially good to drive. In fact, the equivalent BMW is better in every single way. Which would I rather have? Take a guess...
1 comment:
1. Don't start dragging the fairer sex down with you. Even the girliest girl can see that the Mitsubishi sucks.
2. It's not really a Foxtonism if you actually confess to it being all lies. Also, if you omit pirates/communists/winged monkeys from your story.
3. Mustang = Style over substance. It's a rubbish car that's mostly designed by marketing types who are playing on our sense of nostalgia. (still kinda cool... maybe without the obnoxious red stripes though)
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