2019 Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross vs 2020

What's the difference?

You may have noticed that the Mitsubishi Lancer has gone out of fashion recently.

Long a household name and seemingly inseparable from Mitsubishi’s identity, the Lancer will inevitably become another victim of the worldwide SUV craze.

Meet its replacement, the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross. It has a puzzling name (derived from the US-market Mitsubishi Eclipse sports coupe) and a puzzling shape that sits somewhere between a small SUV and a mid-size one.

As Mitsubishi’s first new nameplate in a long time, though, there’s a lot riding on it. Can it deliver SUV gold? I spent a week in the basically-base-model ES Sports Edition to find out.

Ah, Mitsubishi. When my Dad was buying the three diamonds, it was all Astron engines, high-roofed Sigma wagons and then Magnas and stuff.

The company knew how to make passengers cars, made them here and if you were a bearded Akubra hat type, you bought a Pajero. And if you were a weirdo you bought the wacky little Pajero io, because why wouldn't you?

Times have changed and Mitsubishi has changed with them. Now it's almost all SUVs, the tiddly Mirage everyone seems (thankfully) to have forgotten about and even the Methuselah-like Lancer is no more. I thought that car would never die (yes, it will live on in our hearts, etc.).

The Eclipse Cross came not a moment too soon for Mitsubishi. While the ASX is unaccountably still a strong seller for the brand as is the rather better Outlander, there's a gap there in which Mazda, Hyundai and Toyota (among others) make quite a bit of hay.

Mitsubishi needed to be in that market and to do so, resurrected the name of a late '90s sports coupe (yes, really) and slapped it on a startling-looking SUV. If you're gonna plug a gap, go large, right?