Mitsubishi has restyled and updated the 2021 Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross. It's now longer and ditches the split tailgate design of the previous version. There's an edgy design up front, along with a new infotainment system. Paul Maric tests out the new Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross to see if it's worth spending your hard earned cash on.
More Mitsubishi content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi
More Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi/eclipse-cross
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 00:47
Interior: 02:43
Infotainment: 04:02
Safety Tech: 06:37
Practicality: 07:26
On the road: 10:29
Verdict: 14:05
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#mitsubishi #review #eclipsecross
More Mitsubishi content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi
More Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross content: https://www.carexpert.com.au/mitsubishi/eclipse-cross
Hardness tester results: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/121Auf6HGvaBqRToYcuAz94alin7Sw55SpOPECBDlnKE
Skip Ahead:
Intro: 00:00
Exterior: 00:47
Interior: 02:43
Infotainment: 04:02
Safety Tech: 06:37
Practicality: 07:26
On the road: 10:29
Verdict: 14:05
We review every new car on the market, bust car myths, cover the latest car tech and answer your burning questions.
Whether you need new car advice, purchase validation or simply love learning more about new cars and technology, we are your car experts.
Subscribe to Car Expert: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7DvMhvy3H7ntEgn9n3xQcQ?sub_confirmation=1
You'll find us dropping new video content three times a week. If you'd like to ask a question about one of our videos, simply leave us a comment. If you'd like to give us any feedback on our content, feel free to email us, or alternatively, hit us up on social media.
Finally, we want this channel to grow with your support and feedback. If there's anything you don't like or would like to see us change, we'd love to hear from you!
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#mitsubishi #review #eclipsecross
Category
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MotorTranscript
00:00 G'day, I'm Paul. So Mitsubishi wants to continue filling out its range with as many SUVs as possible.
00:05 That's why it created the Eclipse Cross, like a funky small SUV. Well, it's just been updated.
00:10 So it's got a new face, a couple of new extra features. Now, this right here is kind of one down from the top spec.
00:16 It's called the Eclipse Cross Aspire. It's priced at just under $35,000.
00:19 The Eclipse Cross competes with things like the CX-5, the Kia Seltos.
00:23 It's kind of competing with the medium SUVs on the smaller side of medium, as opposed to the bigger ones.
00:29 Today, we're going to do a detailed review of this car.
00:32 If you do want to skip ahead to other parts of this review,
00:34 you can use the time codes up on the screen, or if you're on YouTube, just scroll down and use the chapters below.
00:40 And if you haven't done so already, make sure you hit subscribe and press the bell icon,
00:43 so you can find out every single time we drive an SUV.
00:45 Okay, sorry about all the noise. We've found ourselves next to a freeway today.
00:50 But anyway, you've got seven colors to choose from. In orbit, the base white is a little under $1,000 extra.
00:56 I quite like this one. It's like a pearlescent paint. I think these white pearlescents really elevate just a solid white.
01:02 They make the car stand out nicely, especially in the sun. Now, what about the design? I like it.
01:06 I think it looks really cool. So you've got a giant grille here. On the Aspire model,
01:11 it's all sort of plastic, but it doesn't look cheap and nasty from a distance.
01:15 And I think it offsets nicely with the white. You can actually see those parking sensors concealed in there.
01:20 Let me know what your thoughts are in the comments section below.
01:22 Do you think the design is a little too edgy, a little too out there?
01:24 Or do you think this is what Mitsubishi actually needs? Up here, you've got LED daytime running lights.
01:29 You have a halogen headlight in here.
01:32 Now, if you want to see why I don't really like halogen headlights, click up here to watch our headlight comparison.
01:37 We do a test between halogen, LED and laser.
01:39 You'll get a good idea of why you need better headlights than halogen.
01:43 You can get LED lights on the next bottle above, though. You do get LED fog lights, though, which is cool.
01:48 A little bit of chrome accent here to really define the front. And if we jump around to the side, here
01:53 you've got 18-inch alloy wheels and a nice theme there with the glossy portion on the outside and then the black on the inside.
02:00 It's quite a nice design and I think it makes it stand out nicely. A bit of plastic cladding on the wheel arch,
02:05 even though this is a front-wheel drive model. Indicator built into the wing mirror there and then the white cover on top.
02:11 Camera integrated into that mirror as well. Black roof rails. You have privacy glass.
02:16 And then come around to the back here.
02:17 I quite like that side profile, how it's chiseled in and then
02:20 that belt line runs all the way to the back and then connects with the taillights.
02:24 Those taillights are LED and then they stretch all the way around there and it's quite a nice looking design.
02:29 And then the roof is kind of carved out of the boot as well. So it's got that sleek proportion.
02:33 Looks pretty cool, I reckon. And then you've got Eclipse Cross written along the rear there.
02:38 So yeah, let me know in the comments section below. Do you think the design works?
02:41 Is it a little too edgy? I'm keen to get your thoughts. So we are inside the Eclipse Cross.
02:45 Let's start with the key. This is what it looks like.
02:48 So you've got lock, unlock, that are blank and then on the back there you have Mitsubishi symbol.
02:53 It's a proximity sensing key.
02:55 So you just leave that in your pocket. Once you get inside the car, you press the start button and away you go.
02:59 Now, let's talk styling. So I think this doesn't actually look too bad.
03:03 This isn't as stylish as a lot of the competitors in this segment, but for the most part,
03:07 they've done a good job in terms of the appearance.
03:09 So you've got this new infotainment screen that sits high up on the dashboard.
03:14 You've got soft touch materials along the top of the dashboard and they're an interesting design.
03:18 Yes, it's soft touch, but they're a little bit rough.
03:20 So it's just a different appearance to what you'd expect in a car like this.
03:24 I think I'm not sure about though is all this piano black. It's here. It's here.
03:28 It's also on the steering wheel and my complaint with this is how easy it marks and also how easy it gets dirty.
03:34 You can see that section there just looks filthy already.
03:36 There's also some faux carbon fibre up the top here and also along the door handles, which is a little bit strange.
03:42 But in terms of the touch points, really nice and soft there and also on the doors as well.
03:46 We do have a tool for testing those touch points.
03:49 If you want to see how this car compares to other cars in the segment, just use the link in the description below.
03:55 Now, what about build quality?
03:57 Look, that's all sort of moving around a little bit, but for the most part this feels okay.
04:02 Let's talk infotainment. So new to the Eclipse Cross is this larger 8-inch infotainment screen.
04:07 We've already done a detailed review of this. If you want to watch that, you can click up here
04:12 Today, it'll just be a brief overview. Unfortunately, this infotainment system isn't very good. So it's incredibly basic. You can see here
04:19 there's no inbuilt navigation and I don't know,
04:21 it's just not very good compared to the rest of the competitors in this segment which offer far more detail and a little bit more
04:26 interactivity as well. So in terms of audio, you have AM, FM, DAB plus digital radio.
04:32 You can also stream through Bluetooth, USB audio, USB video as well.
04:36 And then in terms of smartphone mirroring, you have Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
04:40 This is what Apple CarPlay looks like.
04:42 Tiny bit laggy, but it takes up the entire screen.
04:45 And this is kind of the savior to the infotainment system because while
04:49 the standard unit isn't very good, you can just use smartphone mirroring for the rest of the time.
04:54 And this is what Android Auto looks like. Another full screen integration.
04:58 Moves around okay. Still a little bit laggy there. You can see it's not really
05:03 moving all that fast. The other thing to note as well is that both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay require a cable,
05:09 so it's not a wireless system.
05:10 Now I will point out at this point as well that the voice recognition when you do have smartphone mirroring, it works fine.
05:16 It uses your smartphone to interpret what you're saying.
05:19 But when you are just using the car,
05:21 it is a really poor integration of voice recognition because I can't just press it and tell the car anything.
05:26 You have to go into sub menus and even then you have to save voice tags for it to call different people. Like it is just...
05:32 Let me just demonstrate so you understand what I mean.
05:35 I'm going to try and call Alborz Feller. In most cars on the market that have voice recognition built into the infotainment system,
05:41 press the button and say what you want to do. So let's give that a shot.
05:44 Call Alborz Feller.
05:49 So we'll go into the telephone menu now, which is what I assume you have to do.
05:55 Telephone.
05:58 Call Alborz Feller.
06:05 Could not recognize. Press the speech key and speak again.
06:08 So I have to basically save voice tags to match people's names.
06:14 So you have to literally set the car up when you get it so that it can call people instead of just
06:19 calling the person that you want to call. So you can go through recent contacts and search for people.
06:24 But yeah, it is just really a few steps behind other competitors in this segment in terms of usability.
06:29 So in terms of speakers, you have an eight speaker sound system and on the connectivity front
06:33 you have two USB ports plus a 12 volt outlet up front. Okay, let's talk safety. It comes standard with
06:40 autonomous emergency braking with pedestrian detection. You have radar cruise control,
06:44 which you operate here on the steering wheel. Blind spot monitoring built into the wing mirror.
06:48 You also get rear cross traffic alert. Now there is this thing here as well.
06:52 So it is a camera button. When you push that it actually brings up the
06:55 360 degree camera and also a view at the front of the car. You have front and rear parking sensors as well.
07:02 But the clever thing here is that you can actually alternate between views as well.
07:06 So you can get that curb view and you can do that while you're driving.
07:08 So I find that handy when it comes to parking and also positioning the car.
07:12 But it is a little bit deceiving because if you have a look at that view there,
07:14 it looks like we're right next to the line, but in reality, we're quite away from the line.
07:19 So you just make sure you get your judgments right. And the camera itself is pretty low quality as well.
07:23 I would have liked to see something a little bit better there. Let's talk storage. So we'll get rid of this cable.
07:29 Where's your phone going to live? Well, it can live up the front here. Caveat is it doesn't actually fit large phones.
07:35 So you can only really fit a small phone down the front there.
07:38 But you can then slot it into the cup holder if you want to. And in terms of cups themselves,
07:43 you've got our coffee cup here.
07:45 That fits nicely into there and it's easy to get out as well.
07:48 A lot of the time these cup holders are far too deep and it means that
07:51 you end up spilling your coffee if you have a small cup like that. In terms of bottles,
07:54 they easily fit in there with little teeth to hold them in. And then you've got bottle storage inside the doors as well.
08:00 Plenty of room for a big bottle and also spare room either side. Center console is decent size.
08:06 You've got a coin tray plus the ability to fit a full-size bottle in there if you need to.
08:12 You also have a glove box down here, which is reasonably sized and big enough for a bottle.
08:17 Although it doesn't close if the bottle's in there.
08:19 The bottle doesn't go up there either.
08:22 There we go. What about comfort? Well, you've got dual zone automatic climate control. You have heated seats for the first row.
08:29 I quite like the seat. So it's got this micro suede material.
08:32 It's a bit like Alcantara and I think the design looks really cool. The seating position itself is great.
08:37 It hugs you in nicely. Steering wheel sits nicely in the hand. Everything's easy to reach.
08:42 And then you've got paddle shifters. These are metallic too.
08:44 And finally, you have electric seat adjustment for the driver and manual for the passenger. Okay, second row. What's it like?
08:51 Well, I've got a fair bit of room here. Knee room is pretty decent. Remember, I've got this seat quite far back.
08:56 Toe room is very impressive and headroom is reasonable.
09:00 You have mat pockets, or mat pocket rather, behind the passenger seat.
09:05 You've got a center armrest here with two cup holders.
09:08 Stick our bottle in there fairly easily and then you've got storage for the bottle inside the door.
09:13 There's a 12-volt outlet down the bottom here, but no rear air vents, which is a little bit disappointing.
09:19 And then you do have ISOFIX points on the two outboard seats.
09:22 This seat belt, which strangely comes across from the side of the boot and then connects in for your center passenger.
09:28 Now, the interesting thing is these seats don't slide forwards and backwards, but you can adjust the recline.
09:35 So if you do want it to sit a little further back or a little further forward, you just pull that lever.
09:39 And this will also afford you with a little bit of extra boot room as well with seats that move.
09:43 Let's talk cargo space. So it has increased
09:47 over the last model. You now have just over 400 litres of cargo space available in this area.
09:53 If we have a look under here, you have a space saver spare tyre.
09:57 It's a fairly high boot floor and then a fairly high load lip.
10:00 So you're gonna have to lug stuff over the top of that to get it in.
10:02 But you do have storage on the side and also a light built into there. Got a cargo blind as well.
10:07 It's fairly easy to remove. Let's see how it goes with our bags in here. I think there's going to be plenty of room.
10:14 Look at that piece of cake. I'll show you what it looks like with that second row down as well.
10:18 Once you do drop the second row, space expands to a little over
10:23 1100 litres and then you can see it's a fairly flat load floor until you get to the seats where it rises a little bit.
10:29 So we've hit the road in the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross.
10:33 This is an interesting engine because I don't know that Mitsubishi uses it in any of its other cars in Australia.
10:40 It's a 1.5 litre turbocharged four-cylinder petrol engine, makes 110 kilowatts of power and
10:46 250 newton meters of torque and it's mated to a continuously variable transmission.
10:52 Now, what does all that feel like? Well, let's give this a little jab here.
10:55 It's actually not too bad. It's got a fair bit of go. So this is front wheel drive.
11:02 You can get an on-demand all-wheel drive version, but I think the front wheel drive is perfect.
11:06 It doesn't have enough torque for torque suit, which is where the steering starts going all over the place as you start accelerating.
11:12 So it is right in the sweet spot of where it needs to be.
11:15 There is also a system called Active Yaw Control. According to Mitsubishi, it helps this car feel like an all-wheel drive car.
11:22 But to be honest, I'm not really feeling it.
11:25 It's meant to control the torque at the front and then brake individual wheels to
11:28 tuck it in and that kind of thing, but I don't really see it working too well.
11:32 So the official fuel economy figure is 7.3 litres per 100 kilometres.
11:36 Which is almost exactly where we are now, 8.2.
11:40 So it's within earshot of that. Worth keeping in mind today is incredibly hot.
11:43 It was sitting a little lower earlier on, but as the AC runs and that kind of thing, it creeps up a little bit.
11:49 When it comes to ground clearance, you're not going to be doing any rock hopping in these.
11:52 175 millimetres is what you'll be able to clear and on the towing front you have
11:57 1600 kilograms of braked towing capacity. So that's enough for a very small camper trailer.
12:03 And I'd probably go for the all-wheel drive version as well if you are planning on towing. Let's talk ride.
12:07 I think this is the part that Mitsubishi has focused a lot of time on. In Australia
12:11 we have some of these dodgy roads and I've explained before in other videos that
12:14 Australian roads aren't any worse than any other roads around the world,
12:17 but we have a lot of varying road conditions and Mitsubishi's dialled in a lot of comfort into this car.
12:22 So it's not overly sporty, which is kind of where they were heading with this chassis, but it is comfortable and that's important.
12:29 It's soaking up bumps beautifully and out on country roads. It just really glides along nicely.
12:34 So when you do hit corrugations or potholes, they aren't going to be massively jarring. Okay, let's talk about handling.
12:40 Tip it into this corner here. Look, it's got a fair bit of body roll.
12:45 It's not really a sports car in that sense, but it's fine for what it is.
12:49 At the end of the day, a front-wheel drive car like this isn't going to set the world on fire,
12:53 but it does have the benefit of that engine being fairly punchy. So when you do get stuck into it,
12:58 it sort of gives you the response that you need. So we don't have an official 0-100km/h time for the Eclipse Cross,
13:04 but we thought we could put it under the stopwatch to see how it goes.
13:07 Road noise for the most part is pretty good, but if you find yourself on a course chip road like this,
13:23 it speeds above 80km/h, it can get a little bit noisy.
13:26 There's a fair bit of tyre noise that's coming into the cabin. And then on the visibility front,
13:30 I can see clearly out the front there plenty of vision out the sides as well with those big wing mirrors with blind spot monitors.
13:37 I've also got decent visibility out the back. It is worth pointing out that this restyled car is actually 140mm longer,
13:44 which is why you're getting that extra boot space, and it doesn't compromise visibility out the rear now.
13:49 The old one used to have like a split tailgate at the rear. I'm clearly able to see out the back without any dramas.
13:54 Okay, let's talk turning circle. 10.9 metres.
13:57 That's not too bad for a front-wheel drive car. Means you're able to get turns done without doing a 3.2.
14:05 So the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross. The car itself is great.
14:08 It rides beautifully, the engine has plenty of punch and there's lots of room inside.
14:12 But ultimately it's let down on the technology front,
14:15 especially when you compare it to the rest of the competitors in this segment. Think Kia Seltos and that big infotainment screen up the top.
14:21 Think Mazda CX-30, another sleek looking infotainment system with a lot of technology built into it as well.
14:27 While this does have smartphone mirroring technology, the infotainment system itself really lets the whole package down.
14:33 So it's not so much the Eclipse Cross that's the problem,
14:36 it is that all of the competitors are two steps ahead of it in terms of tech and the kind of stuff that this
14:42 demographic expects these days. So if you do have your heart set on this, the car itself is good. It rides well, it drives well.
14:48 It's just that the competitors offer a more compelling purchase option. So let me know in the comments section below.
14:54 Did you buy an Eclipse Cross?
14:56 What do you think of it?
14:57 How's it all going? Or did you buy one of the competitors after test driving it? Really keen to get your feedback.
15:01 So thank you for watching. If you did enjoy this video,
15:04 make sure you hit the like button and follow it up with the subscribe and the bell icon if you haven't done so already.
15:09 But until next time, take it easy.