The 2025 Mitsubishi Outlander isn’t the most exciting vehicle I’ll drive this year. It’s a normal SUV meant to get from place to place, with seven seats and a continuously variable transmission. But for me, the Outlander is one of the more important vehicles I’ll drive.
That’s because to talk about modern Mitsubishi, we have to know modern Mitsubishi. And a lot of us don’t.
[Full disclosure: Mitsubishi flew me to Los Angeles to drive the 2025 Outlander in the city and canyons. In addition to transportation and accommodations, Mitsubishi provided food and bartenders who made me some thick, sugary chocolate milk. -AK]
Why This Car Exists
The 2025 Mitsubishi Outlander is a three-row SUV that starts at $29,645. It makes 181 horsepower and 181 pound-feet of torque from a 2.5-liter, four-cylinder engine, and front-wheel drive is standard while all-wheel drive is optional. As a mainstream brand, you basically can’t exist in America if you don’t sell some form of three-row SUV.
This is why the Outlander is a big deal for Mitsubishi. The brand, known among enthusiasts for sports cars like the Lancer and Eclipse, exists in modern-day America as solely an SUV-maker. The company sells two nameplates in the United States for 2025: the Outlander and Eclipse Cross. The Mitsubishi Mirage, one of the cheapest cars in the U.S. with a starting price of less than $17,000, died in 2024.
The American-market Outlander has three main trims: the ES, SE, and SEL. The car I drove was from the top SEL trim, which has Mitsubishi’s Super All-Wheel Control (S-AWC) all-wheel-drive system.
My loaner car started at $38,795 and had a bunch of options: a $795 Moonstone Gray paint job with a black roof; a $210 tonneau cover; a $185 Welcome Package with a touch-up paint pen, carpet floor mats, and more; a $1,400 Launch Package with a body-color spoiler, black hood emblem, and Mitsubishi puddle lights; and a $3,050 Premium Package with a digital rear-view camera mirror, a head-up display, synthetic leather door inserts that match the quilted seats, and a “Yamaha Ultimate” sound system that Mitsubishi is really proud of.
With fees and every package or option Mitsubishi could seemingly imagine tacked on, the total price of the car still only came to about $46,000, which is a few grand less than the average transaction price for a vehicle right now.
Mitsubishi’s small footprint in the U.S. — and pivot from sports cars to a purely SUV lineup — means enthusiasts miss the old days. It’s a wound that leads many of us, from onlookers to automotive journalists, to write the company off even without experiencing its current offerings. The most I’ve seen Mitsubishi discussed in recent years is merger talks; Mitsubishi is part of an alliance with Nissan, which was in talks for a now-failed merger with Honda, and Mitsubishi wanted none of it. That also explains why this vehicle shares a platform with the Nissan Rogue.
The Outlander isn’t an agile, rally-inspired sports car, like Mitsubishis used to be. It’s a vehicle meant to capitalize on what most new-car buyers in America want — giant SUVs — from a brand that much of America is no longer familiar with. It’s also way better than people think.
2025 Mitsubishi Outlander: The Basics
- Price: $29,645 base ($45,930 as tested)
- Engine: 2.5-liter four-cylinder
- Transmission: Continuously variable transmission (CVT)
- Drivetrain: Front-wheel drive (FWD) or all-wheel drive (AWD)
- Power: 181 horsepower, 181 lb-ft of torque
- Fuel Economy: EPA-estimated 24 city, 30 highway, 26 combined (as tested)
- Body Style: Seven-seat, three-row SUV
What It Looks Like
Mitsubishi says the goal with the exterior of the Outlander is “impressive presence,” and it does have a big presence. The front end has a large, truck-style black grille, giving it a lot of visual weight, like a giant bookcase against a dark-colored wall in your office. It’s big, imposing, and heavy to look at.
This isn’t a bad thing. It’s a styling choice, like how a Lexus has a big front grille and a Mazda has a much smaller one. It’s up to buyers to decide how they feel about it.
The side profile on the Outlander vaguely reminds me of a current Toyota RAV4, and the only thing I find funny about its styling is that it’s ironic to have such a big grille on the front of a car with such low horsepower.
What About The Inside?
The inside of the 2025 Outlander is where it shines. My loaner SEL trim had the model’s new interior option, “Brick Brown,” which perfectly describes the color. Before I learned the name, I wrote in my notes: “Interior is a mix between toffee and brick red.” There’s not a ton of variation in interior colors among modern car companies; any “normal” car is a similar shade of black, tan, gray, brown, or red. The Outlander’s interior is different, and it gets your attention.
There’s a new, larger infotainment display in the 2025 model, which is now 12.3 inches. It’s a bright, crisp display that looks good with Apple CarPlay and is up to par with other modern infotainment systems, and it’s paired with a digital instrument cluster in front of the driver. The instrument cluster doesn’t look brand new like the infotainment screen does — it’s got a more matte display, not a shiny one, making it feel older.
The seats in my loaner car were all diamond-quilted and soft, just like the Brick Brown trim pieces on the doors, and Mitsubishi also updated the center-console area for 2025. It now comes with a larger center-console box and an additional USB-C port.
The center-console area is covered in piano black and dull silver, which don’t look bad — they’re just over-used in modern cars, making the area look less novel. Piano black is also a dust and grease magnet, and after a couple of hours in the car, the Outlander’s center-console area was covered. No one wants to dust every couple of hours.
But what Mitsubishi is most proud of inside the new Outlander is the Yamaha sound system. The 12-speaker Yamaha Ultimate is the fanciest version, and it comes with a bunch of listening modes: “Lively,” which is for dance and pop music and emphasizes beats; “Signature,” which is a more natural tone for classical music, jazz, and blues; “Powerful,” which has heavy bass for genres like rock and hip-hop; and “Relaxing,” which is “calm and unobtrusive” for when you have passengers.
There aren’t speakers in the headrests, but there are features like surround sound, speed-activated volume, and sound adjusted for your air-vent settings. Passengers can also tune the Ultimate sound system based on where people are sitting in the car, emphasizing sound for the driver, passenger, front seats, rear seats, or all seats.
I cycled through every setting and audibly picked up on the changes in speaker delivery, but I wished the settings were easier to access — you have to dig through a couple of menus, making it hard to immediately change the sound settings in a car that’s advertised for its ability to do that.
The sound was crisp and directed at me, and I could tell there was effort to make it better than a standard sound system. It’s like a good pair of headphones versus a bad one — the good headphones have all the tiny clicks and clacks, while the bad ones just blast the music in any direction. The listening modes didn’t overcompensate on bass, treble, or any one setting, but I also didn’t hear the music as clearly as Mitsubishi said I would — the company said I’d be able to hear the singer’s breaths and tell where they were standing in relation to the mic, but when I played one of my favorite songs, I couldn’t.
I imagine one reason is because Mitsubishi had a rental phone hooked up to the car for navigation, and I just played the YouTube version of the song on it. I also imagine another reason is because I’m not a speaker snob. I just yell the lyrics over the audio anyway.
How It Drives
The 2025 Outlander isn’t exciting to drive, mainly because it’s a giant three-row SUV with the same horsepower as a Mazda MX-5 Miata. But it is pleasant, and that’s more important.
Both the gas and brake pedal have a lot of travel before they hit the floor, and neither have an immediate response to input. The Outlander picks up speed slowly, the brakes don’t bite hard, and if you’re ripping through the California canyons — which we did in this car — there’s body roll, understeer, and a loss of grip mid-corner. It’s a commuter SUV, and it performs like one.
But none of that really matters. The Outlander’s CVT is smooth, there’s no wind noise on the highway, and there’s not much road noise. The Outlander is an SUV people buy for comfort and a decent price, not because they need stiff brakes or high horsepower. Other SUVs may have those party tricks, but the Outlander doesn’t need them to serve its audience.
Does the 2025 Mitsubishi Outlander Fulfill Its Purpose?
Mitsubishi isn’t a brand at the forefront of minds in modern America. A lot of people even ask if the company still makes cars (with the passing of the Mirage, I guess the answer is technically “no”). But the 2025 Mitsubishi Outlander is important, for both Mitsubishi and the market.
That’s because the Outlander gives car buyers and families another decent-quality, moderately priced SUV to drive and potentially buy. There aren’t a lot of “small” three-row SUVs like the Outlander, probably because adults can’t easily fit back there, but the Outlander’s $29,645 base price puts it on par with another: the $32,000 Kia Sorento. Those two undercut more mainstream three-row SUVs from other major automakers, like the Honda Pilot ($40,000), Toyota Highlander ($39,000), and Chevy Traverse ($38,000).
In addition to the MSRPs, I’d look at a brand like Mitsubishi as a chance to get a deal on a lease, purchase, or wait time for a car. Maybe my negotiations would work, maybe they wouldn’t — but when you’re in less demand, you’re probably more willing to make a deal. New-car buyers should have good options that fit their budget, and if a Mitsubishi Outlander gives them that, it’s a net benefit.
During my time in the Outlander, I wondered what people would think about its styling, features, and price without knowing it’s a Mitsubishi. People are quick to criticize the company and its vehicles because we all love confirmation bias. We want to be right, even if that means we ignore the virtues or pitfalls of the thing we want to be right about.
The Mitsubishi Outlander is a decent car, and it gives buyers more choice in the realms of styling, performance, and budget. It’s no Lancer Evolution, but it does serve a practical purpose — and that’s a good thing.
The 3rd row is fine for its intent, I wouldn’t mind seeing some kind of delete option for it to get a spare tire – or call it a spare tire package, that deletes the 3rd row.
I can forgive it more in the hybrids in the segment including the PHEV, where the battery generally lives in the same space it would go. Although Toyota figured it out in the RAV4 so that excuse is running thin.
I’m not shopping in the segment anyway, so my only real personal gripe with the 3rd row is that it makes it eligible for use in the ride hailing apps as an XL. That definitely needs some limitations. On that note, the current gen seems to have less headroom in the 3rd row than the prior one, as I have found out in back to back rides getting each gen…
As an owner of a previous-gen Outlander, it just occurred to me that the 3rd row of the current-gen may have been designed around the PHEV version by default — meaning, basically, “If the PHEV doesn’t get a spare tire, nobody does!” I’m sure that brings with it a cost savings for Mitsubishi, but I would definitely miss the spare.
I bet you are right. I also thought of the similarly sized VW Tiguan, which offered the 3rd row in the outgoing gen, and some searching said it did indeed still have a spare. Also the old Nissan Rogue offered a 3rd row or a hybrid for some years, but not together; the hybrid still appears to have had a spare, but the 3-row versions did not.
Oh man I’d love a Yamaha sound system in my car. Thoroughly uninterested in driving a re-badged Rogue though.
yamaha audio products (and instruments) have a reputation of being incredible for their price point.
I love just about everything Yamaha has ever made. I have a pretty high end Yamaha mini system for my garage stereo from the 80’s that has beautiful sound. The SHO V6 is one of my all time favorite engines, and the TW200 is one of my dream bikes. I wish they had made a whole car!
Doesn’t share a platform with the Rogue…it IS a Rogue. It’s all Nissan. It’s made by Nissan with the Rogue’s old 2.5L.
Completely false. It’s manufactured in Japan at a Mitsubishi plant. It shares a platform with the Rogue and uses a Nissan powertrain only in the non-PHEV version.
The PHEV is pretty popular in Canada. You see quite a few of them around.
I wonder if the PHEV version is the one to get. It would definitely have much better fuel economy.
the phev is over 40 grand is the only problem with the phev. if you don’t need/want anything bigger and care about fuel economy it’s great.
I would imagine Mitsubishi‘s US pivot from rally inspired cars and rugged SUVs to exclusively decent value crossover SUVs would make for an interesting long form article.
Mmm, a nice big bowl of store brand vanilla. They should merge with Nissan honestly as this seems like it’s basically the same as the Rogue, maybe slightly bigger? They’re already competing for busiest CUV front end. Not sure a slightly nicer than typical interior and acceptably decent tuning is enough. The rare times I see a Mitsubishi I always wonder what the thought process for buying one was. Just to be different-older folks who had one in the ’80s or ’90s? The one friend I had with a Diamond Star Motors product (an eagle talon tsi) had multiple expensive failures by 120K and he babied that car so much we relentlessly teased him about it so I don’t think it was him flogging it to death. And needless to say it turned him and the rest of our friend group off of Mitsubishi forever whether fairly or not. Drove a couple different generations of Galant back in the day, better driving than your typical refrigerator car, but also so are most Hondas, while having a much better track record of reliability and resale. As someone said in the thread about which brands Stellantis should kill off less consumer choice seems sad but not really sure what Mitsu is offering that makes sense vs their competition.
I would imagine something like “I have enough money for a new three row SUV with a warranty, great!”
I almost bought one of these when they came out but the dealers were horrid. I still like the look of it. The 3rd row is joke but it’s not that big of car. The issue always comes from the price it looks good then you add things and before you know it the value proposition isn’t there. Plus while I trust Mitsubishi tuning cvt it bothered me it was a Nissan engine and I didn’t want to think what that meant for the ctv. I see the phev sometime on sale for $35k and I think about it but I don’t want to deal with their dealers.
Good. The instrument cluster shouldn’t be made out of a shiny, reflection-magnet material. Every shiny display I’ve seen that supposedly has better image quality is completely ruined by the amount of reflection that happens. I hate that setting TVs to torch mode in stores has convinced people that shiny screens are better than matte.
Damn clouds and their loud music… /grumble
Ooh, “pretty good,” “decent”!
Gotta get me one! maybe two!
We looked at these before purchasing our Pilot. There were two major deal killers: 1) the third row is virtually unusable; 2) the SEL PHEV one is what my wife liked, and it just didn’t feel like a $53k car. It didn’t help that the nearest Mitsubishi dealer is a few hours away, versus the two Honda dealers each 10-15 minutes away. If they could get the PHEV trim to max out in the $45k range, I think they’d have a much stronger value equation since the thing is effectively only a two-row.
Depends regarding the 3rd row. The Outlander is a compact suv, the Pilot is mid-sized and if you have little one but not too little the small 3rd row works great especially since the 2nd row is adjustable for legroom.
Maybe so, but if you need to use the third row regularly, which we do, the Outlander third row isn’t usable. To get sufficient room for a kid with legs in the third row meant almost no room for a person with legs in the second row. I suppose you could also argue that the front row could shift forward to accomodate the second row being forward, but that just reinforces we made the right choice in buying the Pilot.
The Outlander third row is in competition with the Tiguan, GLB, and Discovery Sport’s third rows (and the outgoing Journey’s) as a +2 option for small kids. Comparing the Outlander space-wise to a vehicle two size segments larger (!) is hilarious.
I didn’t directly compare the Pilot to the Outlander – I stated the Outlander third row is useless for humans with legs, so we purchased a Pilot instead, as my small children have legs.
Right, to which I said you’re comparing two vehicles in completely different segments for completely different use cases. If you compared it to a Tiguan or GLB’s third-row and said it was significantly smaller, ok sure.
But saying it’s significantly smaller than the Pilot’s? Well duh? I sure hope so? In that case the Odyssey has a much larger third row than the Pilot, and a lot more cargo space behind it too. The Pilot’s trunk behind the third row is useless for carrying a cello, so we ruled it out.
So, I can see you feel a lot more passionate about the Outlander than I do, so I’m going to check out of this condescending discussion.
I have no qualms for or against the Outlander, I just feel the need to point out weird double standards where I see them…because by your reckoning, the Odyssey would have been a better choice, as it has the biggest third row that can actually seat adults. If you’re going to compare across segment, you might as well compare across bodystyle, too.