After nearly a year of speculation, it’s now official: After a remarkable 11 model years on the American market, the Mitsubishi Mirage is about to ride off into the sunset. However, even with increased demand, don’t expect them to disappear from dealership lots immediately. See, Mitsubishi has a plan for the first half of 2025 that should see this sensible little car stick around past its last model year.
Let’s start by taking a step back and looking at the Mitsubishi Mirage as what it is — transportation. With a 78-horsepower 1.2-liter three-cylinder engine hitched to a CVT, it’s no speed demon, but it’ll get you where you need to go. Better yet, the Mirage has been in production since 2012, so any and all kinks were ironed out long ago. The result? Honest, reliable no-BS transportation. With Fed rates hovering between 5.25 and 5.5 percent, the Mirage is the sort of car a lot of people could use.
Indeed, during the second quarter of 2024, Mitsubishi Mirage sales are up 146 percent year-over-year. That’s massive! While the Mirage certainly isn’t as popular as, say, a Toyota Corolla, thousands of extra sales aren’t a bad thing for Mitsubishi, even if they come in the subcompact hatchback’s twilight model year.
Yes, the rumors are true — Mitsubishi has confirmed in its own words that “Mirage is being discontinued in the U.S. market, and there will not be a 2025 model,” adding that “Production will cease late this year.” The most obvious sign? Omission of the Mirage from a press release detailing the 2025 lineup. Frequently misunderstood and mocked by those who missed the point of a dirt-cheap hatchback rated at 36 mpg city, 43 mpg highway, and 39 mpg combined, the modern-day Geo Metro is on its way out, leaving Americans with one fewer choice for just a good little car that won’t break the bank.
However, if you’re scraping together your quarters for an affordable, economical car with a long lifespan and a 10-year/100,000-mile powertrain warranty, you still have time. A lot more time than expected. On Tuesday, a Mitsubishi representative told The Autopian, “we expect to have sufficient dealer stock to last into the summer of 2025.” Hot damn! That’s more-or-less six months worth of efficient little hatchbacks.
So, fly high little Mirage. You did everything the people needed you to do and more, and while the sand’s running through the hourglass, the last grain hasn’t dropped yet. When the time comes, someone needs to put the last example in a museum with a plaque that commemorates the death of the affordable subcompact hatchback in America, because one thing’s for certain — the automotive landscape we were raised in no longer exists.
(Photo credits: Mitsubishi)
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I’m a little jealous of those patterned cloth seats. Those are great!
I am a big Mitsubishi fan, but even then, driving one of these is just a truly sad automotive experience. It really makes you question your life.
Killing this off juuust as people are again realizing that an SUV getting low 20s or high teens MPG isn’t economical
I hope those Ralliart ones are the only ones left in stock next year, so they get discounted. I’d put serious thought into getting one just to laugh all the time, CVT be damned.
Looking forward to the autopian piece in a year or so when one of the oddball faux rally editions that just came out last year (?) appears on Cars N Bids.
Let’s start off with what is great about these cars: The warranty. That’s it. Yes, they are capable of 35-40mpg, but so are so many cars nearly twice the size of a Mirage (Hyundai Accent/Kia Rio come to mind immediately, as does the Toyota Corolla). 10 years 100,000 miles on the powertrain and 5 years 60k on most of the rest of the car is a great warranty, Mitsubishi knew that when they saw Hyundai and Kia do it, and that’s why they copied it.
These cars are built in Thailand out of the cheapest, most generic-looking components possible. The build quality, while okay, is not stellar, virtually nothing looks finished, and for a 3-cylinder subcompact, it’s surprisingly annoying to work on, with plenty of room, but no access (even oil changes are a bit of a P.I.T.A. on these due to the filter being both tiny, and way up there). While they come standard with power mirrors, locks, windows, and A/C, they don’t really have a whole lot in the way of options, and there is zero room in these cars whatsoever. They honestly should’ve taken a page from Mercedes’ book and ditched the back seat and given decent leg room like the Smart Fortwo. Other quirks include various parts of your emergency roadside kit (spare tire, jack, etc) being stashed in various places throughout the car because there’s no room for all of it in any one place, odd LED lighting (single LEDs) in a few places on the interior, and the fact that the mirrors have fairly limited range of motion.
The driving experience is, to put it simply, horrid. You’d expect a car this small to be nimble and handle decently. It’s not, and it doesn’t. To quote Kevin Harvick, “It pushes like a fucking dump truck.” On top of that, the braking is barely adequate, there is virtually NO power/acceleration (the 1-2 punch of a 3-cylinder engine and a CVT transmission), and wind and road noise are flat-out deafening. The noises made by the whole powertrain are annoying, loud, and at times frightening when driven in anger, and trust me, you’re going to be angry if you end up driving one of these. A quick trip through the local car wash might have been the scariest part of my first drive in one of these little wastes of raw material, as the water jets dented the roof in over my head with a loud “thump”. A few seconds later the blow driers popped it back out, and then back in, and then back out, that’s how flimsy this car truly is.
The Accent and Rio no longer exist (killed off in 2022 and 2023, respectively), it appears the Versa might have the subcompact market to itself in 2025, though we should check if Nissan has confirmed anything, I think they were talking about at least withdrawing it from Canada
You could still buy a used one, which would still be a better decision than a Mirage.
The problem with this segment are not the cars itself, is how everything is huge (roads, parking lots, gas is cheap). Driving a pickup is not an issue for a lot of people since the space is just there and driving a subcompact car is more of a risk.
A Honda Fit was a better choice for this segment since its a little bigger (wider at least) for american roads.
The other challenge is cars like the Mirage are competing with used Camrys.
I am admittedly of two minds on this.
In one sense, I mourn the demise of affordable transportation fresh off the dealer lot. Indeed, a Mirage would have served a number of people who wanted ‘very basic transportation with a long warranty’ well.
In another sense, they only moved ~14k of them in 2023 in a 16 million per year vehicle market. Even with more than double that volume it is nearly inconsequential. People vote with their dollars. They’re not voting Mirage, and the profit margins on such a vehicle can’t possibly justify the additional investment by Mitsubishi in the platform for the US market.
I think of what I would buy at that price point. And I just can’t do it. The car fundamentally sucks more than the offset of the positive of the cheap price. Would you buy one if you had only $17k (or whatever equivalent monthly payment) to spend? Would you recommend it to someone you like?
I look at the continually falling prices of used 2-3 year old vehicles and think that rolling the dice with a nicer used vehicle is a gamble worth taking at $17k. Or taking a longer term on a nicer new base Corolla. Maybe with a gun to my head in 2021/22 in the time of loony-tunes used car pricing I do it if I’m absolutely stuck. But if I’m at that point, maybe I have to recheck my financial assumptions before taking the plunge.
Yugo. Geo. Cavalier. Caliber. The graveyard of nameplates that traded on cheap nearly exclusively. The business model is not sustainable, and automakers have to be profitable to exist. I have empathy for those who are in a financial bind, but if people still won’t buy the Mirage in significant numbers despite the squeeze of higher prices and interest rates, the business case isn’t there.
In fairness, the Cavalier was a solid seller for a reaaaaaaalllly long time. I remember when GM discontinued the station wagon version, and both consumers and dealers were upset, feeling it was a good seller.
While I agree with both your minds on this, I additionally see the lack of demand as a sign that consumer confidence in the economy is pretty good right now.
While I personally like oddball stuff with bargain basement features b/c of how I engage with vehicles, I realize most people don’t and want more. It’s a long-term strength of our economy for sure.
In a better world this would be the size of car most people drive in the U.S. Although, in an even better world most people wouldn’t have to depend on having a car.
You realize you’re on a car enthusiast site, right?
Car enthusiasts can still want a better world where we didn’t have to rely on cars for everything.
I agree with the spirit of what you’re saying, but the reality of the US is that we’re a big country. With big distances between places.
For example, I live 10 miles from any business or population center of any kind. I choose to live here for many reasons, but it does mean that any sort of mass transit is completely impractical.
I don’t live in a remote area, either. I live in a northeastern state with a population in the top 10 of all states. The west and midwest are even less dense. There’s no way mass transit works for a large portion of the ‘area’ of the US. That being said, a large portion of the ‘population’ of the US lives in areas concentrated enough for it to work, and we need to do better. I’m currently listening to The Power Broker, and what Moses did to NY is downright criminal with regards to mass transit.
I don’t ever expect every single person to be served by mass transit, but even suburbs can be bikeable with the proper infrastructure. And like you said a large portion (a majority) lives in areas that can be well-served by transit. Especially if we end our ridiculous zoning laws for housing and mixed use (which is happening to an extent in some places).
I won’t really mourn these, but it sucks that the rest of the world gets access to reasonably priced subcompact city cars and we just keep getting more $30k CUVs.
I didn’t know they had a 10/100k warranty. I thought that was just Hyundai/Kia
That started in 2003 when Finbarr O’Neal left Hyundai/Kia US to lead Mitsubishi. O’Neal confronted his South Korean bosses at Hyundai in 1997-an absolute no-no at the time because that was like committing career suicide-and told them if they wanted to really competitive in the US they need to improve production and quality and back it up with a warranty they could stand behind. They reluctantly followed O’Neal’s advice, and were impressed by the results. O’Neal was on the verge of becoming a top executive in the company’s global corporate structure when he foolishly took the CEO job at Mitsubishi US. He was gone within two years.
Thanks for the back story, I didn’t know that
Is this finally the end of the subcompact? I think the Versa is rumored to be dead, but I’m not sure if Nissan made it official yet.
I know this page is going to be loaded with “just buy a used Corolla” nonsense, but I don’t think some people understand that while that may be the ideal solution, it’s not necessarily the best. In my opinion (as I’ve been there) a super-cheap new compact has the ability to deliver one from the dregs. Owning something new, that needs hardly any maintenance initially, with a warranty and is easy to street park can be a blessing. Throughout most of it’s existence, a new Mirage could be had for at or less than a compact out of warranty. That matters.
People have been using the “why buy cheap economy car new when I can buy a 6 year old Grand Cherokee with 70k on it for the same price?!” and they typically pay for it in the end.
When a Trax starts at $20K and is just much better in pretty much every way that matters to these buyers, I think the market for a $17K Mirage is necessarily going to be limited.
I agree with you that “buy used” isn’t great advice for everyone, but I don’t think losing this particular car is a great loss.
I think people get too hung up on “car” vs “CUV”, and forget that the subcompact market is alive and well, just with a slightly higher ride height.
+1 to each of you regarding “just buy used” – there’s a number of reasons someone would end up with a car like the Mirage instead of something like a used Corolla. The warranty coverage, credit/better financing on new over used, other incentives for negative equity, etc.
To build on your point V10, there’s a mindset that people seeking the cheapest car are also looking for the smallest car, which isn’t always how that actually works out. Mitsubishi isn’t really such an example, but for brands that did have complete lineups and especially those that are still making cars, the price gap between a subcompact and the next vehicle up is usually narrowed by greater incentives on the latter, and often equipped about the same (not like a loaded compact vs. a base midsize) and rated for similar fuel economy. Then there’s the case of a purpose-built vehicle like you mention with the Trax.
RIP Dodge Journey.
Amen.
I think the cheapest the Trax really gets is about 21k (screaming deal of course, can’t really complain about that). But there’s still a significant difference between 17k and 21k, especially when you factor sales tax, efficiency, etc.
The Trax is certainly a better decision for a lot of people, it’s a good value. But I still think it doesn’t bode well to have these truly cheap options wiped off the map. Also, long term I’m not sure it’s great to have the entire economy car segment to just be the Chevy Trax, and no other options. All it takes is for GM to kill a good thing (which they do what, maybe 4 times a decade, minimum?) and an entire segment is gone.
But it isn’t just the Trax.
Kicks, Venue, Soul, and probably some more I forgot are still out there in the very low $20s.
Fair on the Soul, and potentially the Kicks (all the Kicks around here are bizarrely priced way too high). Maybe it’s just where I live, but the Hyundai dealers treat the Venue even worse than the Accent was, usually keeping a single high trim 25k version around and that’s it.
I give GM a lot of credit (extremely rare for me) with the Trax, because they seem to genuinely be building and selling low and mid trim examples in large quantities, rather than using it as some sort of entry level MSRP compliance vehicle. You can actually select a real life Trax at a local dealership for the most part, where some of these small cars you have to go on a nationwide hunt to find one.
The sorts of people who need a 20k car fast because their 30 year old Saturn finally blew up could be well served by a totally available Mirage, versus having to twist a dealer’s arm to import a Venue.
Most of the people I know who have gone the Mirage route have 0 credit score. The went the Mitsubishi route because that was the only dealer in town that would finance them for a new vehicle. “Bring in a dime and you can drive out with a new ride because I’m “The dealer for the people.”” Sure they could have gone to a buy here, pay here lot but those used cars have had more owners and more frequently than Leonardo has has girlfriends.
I think you hit on a big part of this – the emotionality of car buying decisions. Sure, for a lot of people, a new Mirage makes the most sense; but they just can’t do it, and end up buying something they purely want, often at a long term loss.
When it comes to cars, it’s simultaneously one of our best and worst things I think.
I will likely get flak here for saying this but GOOD RIDDANCE. When this steaming pile of refuse was introduced, it was 10k, which, fine (I guess). Now, this garbage is listed for just under 20K as the base model. You know what else could be had for just under 20K? A used Corolla or Civic, which will last longer, be almost as efficient, and will be much more brisk. Also, base Mavericks used to be about 20K, which would have beat the Mirage in almost every other metric.
I had the unfortunate experience of having a new Mirage as a rental car. Ruined my day every time I walked out to the driveway. The build quality was horrible, it buzzed and rattled, the AC didn’t keep up with AZ summer temps, and the engine/CVT combo was almost dangerous. Highway merging took some serious planning, as 78HP barely motivated this pile. The engine had to work so hard that gas mileage was meh. Oh, and the thing had temporary lifter tick every time I started it in the morning. Hey, at least apple carplay worked.
They say there are no new bad cars, but those people have never experienced this garbage. Anyone who buys one of these new over a used Honda Fit is a silly goose.
***Edit… I now see that these sell at 17K. My point still stands.
Yeah, Mitsubishi keep raising the price as the competition disappeared. The Fiesta, Fit, Yaris, and Spark all went away during that time.
Ford also raised Maverick prices around 40% in 3 years 🙁
People can’t afford new cars anymore, stuck buying used.
While I tend to agree with everything you said, I’m going to miss seeing these putter around. They are the only cars in actual colors I see anymore. Monochrome cars are sad.
used car interest rates are much higher than new. For someone on a thin budget, that puts a used Corolla or Civic or used Honda Fit out of reach in a lot of cases. Plus, neither has a warranty, and where money is exceptionally tight, that’s strike two against used.
For those struggling hard to get by that need reliable transport, a Mirage is not a bad option.
For those of us in a different economic situation, it is not desirable for a lot of reasons.
I used to shit all over these cars and vehicles like the Dodge Journey, but I read a post from a fellow reader here that changed my attitude greatly. This is an old, dated, and anachronistic vehicle, no doubt. But for a family that needs wheels they can count on that isn’t going to make choices even harder (think groceries vs car repair because someone can’t get to their job due to another breakdown), this is exactly the right answer. It’s a pretty tough little thing and it has a hella good warranty.
So, I’m grateful someone else helped correct my course on this and make me look at things through a different lens. I’m not being judgmental here, but just saying, this really does have a place in the market.
My first car was similar, a 1995 Geo Metro. These tough little boxes will let you learn a lot without risking much. RIP Mirage.
I saw a really sick Evo the other day, but as I got closer I saw it was just a Mirage.
So you’re saying that the 2025 Mirage is exactly that? A Mirage?
I kinda wonder if Daihatsu would be a good fit for the low end market.
They were here from 1989 to 1992. You didn’t miss much.
Yeah, I was around but we’re talking about modern Daihatsu’s under Toyota ownership.
I have to wonder if they’re trying not to admit there’ll be a new model but they’re skipping the ’25MY. That would be the main reason to stockpile.
That was my first thought too, because it’s not as if Mitsubishi showrooms are overflowing with model variety.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
First the Spark, and now the Mirage 🙁
I think the Spark was seriously underappreciated. I still see a ton of them around here, they seem stout and plucky, and I daresay the last facelifted version made it even look pretty sharp.
My friend had a Spark and while it was way too small for me it was a perfect car for her. It got great mileage from what I remember and it was adorable. Hers also was very reliable. Don’t know enough about them to know whether she was lucky or they were just mechanically sound cars.
I had a Spark as a rental for one month. It was the perfect size for me and the perfect load height for my son’s car seat. I was actually looking for a Spark EV while insurance was deciding if my Model 3 was totaled. If GM hadn’t discontinued HV battery support for the Spark EV, I would be daily driving one right now.