2009 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart Video

2009 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart Video Transcript

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>> Take Mitsubishi's bread and butter car, give it a little rat motor and just about the coolest gear box made, that's the Lancer Ralliart not quite an Evo but it still makes us want to check the tech. ^M00:00:18 [ Music ] ^M00:00:25

>> This little beast is made for the person who wants to pretend they're a rally driver on public roads so it's not a huge amount of tech especially in our particular car which doesn't have any options. So imagine if you will this is the base audio unit, single slot CD right there, AM/FM, axillary in but notice how interesting that is instead of an aux jack they decided to make it complicated and give you a pair of RCAs; red and white. Now I don't see the advantage to that although it's a little more sturdy of a connector but that's just weird. Oh tricky thing about getting your aux jack to actually come up. Do you see an aux button anywhere? Take a look. No I didn't either. Consulting the manual tells me you stand on these CD MP3 button for 2 seconds, [beep] beep and then your aux coming up. No HD radio. No iPod adaptor, no USB connection. There's no hard drive in this unit. Now if you do option up the navigation rig there is a 40 gig hard drive in there and a music server and that would be nice. This unit has 140 watts; it's got 6 speakers around the cabin, its fine. You've got a fair amount of DSP functions here. You got your usual bass, mid, treble, fader and balance but then if you go to this first menu you do have these DSP profiles and for a middle ground between these base unit and the full blown nav hard drive unit you can get this in a 6 disk internal, so a modest improvement there and it does play MP3 disks as well as standard and audio CDs. Lancer Ralliart comes standard with Bluetooth hands free which should be base line on any car above 20 grand these days so luckily it does have it. This is the gear box, it looks kind of like an automatic, kind of like a manual cause it's kind of both. It's one of their twin clutch SST gear boxes. Mitsubishi does these dual clutch automated manuals really well. You've got a standard gate. On the left side here you can select your gear individually and of course when you're in drive you've got your paddles up here which feel like metal in fact they tell us they're magnesium. Now why I don't know but it's kind of cool. 2 other buttons down here are part of the allure of this car this little silver rocker is your sport or normal selector; that's gonna reshape the behavior of the engine, transmission combo and then right here you've got your active center differential control. This is a real Mitsubishi thing you've got 3 modes there that show up on the display, tarmac is pavement of course in this continent and you've got a gravel mode and snow mode. What that does it reshape the behavior of a very sophisticated center differential in this car that is hydraulically and electronically operated picking up sensor input from all around the drive train wheel spin, yaw, steering wheel angle all of that kind of information and telling the car how to bias the power front to rear. Now graciously enough Mitsubishi provides this lovely buffet table back here and unfortunately it's standard, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. This kind of a prosaic looking car, kind of like for the person who has to have a family sedan but wants a little sports car but do they really want this thing past the age of 20? I don't know. This little motors got a lot of work to do; 3500 pound car being pushed around by a 2 liter inline 4 but of course it's turbo charged with an intercooler. You can see the turbo back there by the exhaust some of your plumbing to get to the intercooler right here. 237 horse power, 253 foot pounds of torque, pretty good but again kind of a heavy car. Never the less 0-60 happens in 5.8 and the mileage is pretty good 17, 25. ^M00:03:51 [ Music ] ^M00:03:56

>> On the road the Lancer Ralliart rewards you taking charge. If you leave it in normal mode and standard dive you're reminded all the time this is basically a put put motor with a turbo but get into sport mode and or shift it yourself to keep things all spooled up and this car is transformed into a great, big toy. Mitsu's TCSST twin clutch automated manual is so far my favorite gear box of that type. It has virtually none of the weird bulkiness you find in virtually every other car makers automated manual and just plain super sharp shifts. No they don't all do that. It's almost funny how high strung this car gets in sport mode, it just about refuses to come down below 3 grand RPM and is eager to do one of those little automated throttle blip downshifts that's the least provocation. Yep you'll be grinning like an idiot and this one has the shift paddles in the right place, nailed to the steering column. [ Background music ]

>> Ok let's price our Lancer Ralliart, about 26 6 base, kind of a not so cheap date. Navigation system with the hard drive, the 40 gig drive and a music server is 2000 more. 2750 is your other consideration for the recaro [assumed spelling] package that'll get you the Rockford files gate audio, 6 disk CD and you also get the high intensity disk charge head lights and the recaro seats of course, that's that weird mixed bag [music].