2019 Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross vs 2020

What's the difference?

I didn’t expect to like the Eclipse Cross as much as I did. It is well equipped, packs a modern peppy engine, has a spacious cabin and a surprisingly usable boot. 

Sure, the interior looks like it could be a decade old, but it’s augmented with all the right things and makes for a comfortable place to be.  

I’d argue you don’t need to spend $1000 on the gloss-black plastic additions, but instead consider the next grade up (the LS) as it has improved safety inclusions and other enhancements for a small additional cost.

When you stand back and look at the Eclipse Cross, it's a curious thing. Barely bigger than a Nissan Qashqai - heck, it's not much bigger than the ASX - and priced at the top end of compact SUVs and the middle of mid-sizers.

It's got an impressive safety package but drives like a car much older than it looks. It pairs a brand new engine with a deeply ordinary transmission. For every bit of contemporary bling, Mitsubishi saddles it with some old school cruft.

Despite all that, I almost liked it - roomy, great safety gear, interesting to look at and almost well-priced. Perhaps the LS is a better buy - a fair bit less money, not much less bling.

The Eclipse Cross is like nothing else on the market. The front of it has been brought in line with Mitsubishi’s current 'Dynamic Shield' design language that features prominently across the Outlander, Pajero Sport and new Triton ranges. Unlike the traditional shape of the Qashqai or insectoid looks of the Sportage, the Eclipse Cross is a dead-set over-commitment to right angles. 

Around the back things get a little odd. The rear light clusters clasp the rear from the roof down, then the bumper curves out giving it a strange bulbous look. To confuse things further, there’s a split rear window with a light-bar spoiler running across the middle. 

It’s a lot to take in. For what it’s worth, I don’t hate the look of it, but I can see why it could turn some potential buyers off.

The black highlights on our car look a smidge better than the standard grey-on-chrome fittings, but again, I’m not sure if they’re worth an extra grand.

The 18-inch alloys fill those wheel arches well, and present good value at this price.

The cabin design of the Eclipse Cross looks the same as pretty much every other Mitsubishi and wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Lancer from 10 years ago. The brand’s interior design language has moved at a glacial pace since 2007.

The materials are marginally better than those days, though, with tactically placed soft-touch surfaces in all the right places and a mix of silver chrome and gloss-plastic that’s cheap but effective.

Better bits include the wheel, dash and multimedia screen, while the transmission tunnel area is a bit clumsy. 

The huge manual handbrake takes up so much room next to the driver that there’s padding in it because you have no choice but to rest your arm on it, and there are a plethora of blanked out buttons for the all-wheel drive system from higher grades.

The seat material is a thoroughly padded synthetic with a rather odd pattern on it. It’s surprisingly comfortable in both seating rows.

Well hello there, Mitsubishi style, where have you been? The last decade of Mitsubishi design has been fairly tame. The recent butching up of the range has come courtesy of the 'Dynamic Shield' front end on, well, everything that isn't a Mirage.

The Eclipse Cross is like Big Uncle Kev doing a bomb in the pool at Christmas. It's woken everyone up, including me. I'm not saying I'm a fan particularly - there is a heck of a lot going on - but I have in the past been in trouble for complaining about boring-looking cars and then laying into not-boring looking cars.

The Dynamic Shield front is pretty good and lets you know who makes the car from the get-go. The steeply raked rear screen dominates the profile, giving it a bit of raciness so far missing from the line-up.

The LS-based Black Edition is probably the best of the lot because the chrome of the Exceed really accentuates the sharp angles. And there is of course, the polarising tailgate - that fast glass meets a vertical glass panel and it's split across the middle like a Honda CR-X. It's a bit distracting from the inside, though.

Inside is much calmer, with the Exceed scoring new front trims and lighting for MY20. I quite like this interior, though, everything feels more substantial than the ASX in particular, but also looks very contemporary.

Just a pity the ASX steering wheel is along for the ride, although as you'll see shortly, it's not without irony that I say that.

Due to the centre console issue in 2WD variants with the handbrake sticking out, space is a bit limited for your arms. 

There are plenty of storage areas for front occupants, however, with some huge cupholders (that also have an ambient light in the bottom of them, nice touch) a storage trench under the air-con that also hosts two USB ports, a 12-volt outlet and oddly the 'Eco' mode button, as well as a big centre console box with a removable top section for smaller objects.

The 7.0-inch touchscreen is great to use and not too hard to reach for the driver, although the lack of a volume knob (there are touch buttons on the sides) will irritate passengers.

For some inexplicable reason Mitsubishi have chosen to include a touchpad as an alternative to controlling the media functions. It is similar to the much-maligned units in Lexus models and seems utterly pointless to me. The touchscreen is easier to control in every conceivable scenario. I only found the tactile home-button below the touch-pad to be useful.

The rear is left with slightly less amenities, consisting of a bottle-holder in the door and a flimsy drop-down armrest with two cupholders. For an SUV this size it’s a bit of a let down to not get vents in the back of the centre console for rear passengers, although air conditioning is provided to the rear via vents under the front seats.

I found leg and headroom was excellent in both rows for me at 182cm tall. It’s a truly spacious and comfortable cabin, if a little plain.

The boot loses out courtesy of the sloping roofline with a minimum space of 341 litres but there’s a trick. The back seats are actually on rails, so you can move them forward to extend the amount of available room. With them fully stowed forward, space is boosted to 448L.

With the seats folded flat, max space is an average 1122L.

Strictly-speaking the Eclipse Cross is not  a mid-size SUV. When you look at the numbers, its wheelbase is no longer than the underwhelming ASX with which it shares its underpinnings. But the Eclipse has a couple of tricks up its sleeve.

The first is that the already roomy (for its size) back seat can slide forward and back by 200mm. On top of that, the seats recline down to 32 degrees, which is pretty laid back. The 60/40 splits are also separate so you can tune the boot space that way.

With the rear seats slid all the way back you start with 341 litres and if you go the other way, it's 448 litres, shaming bigger machines. Drop the rear seats altogether and space goes to 1122 litres.

The load space and boot aperture are narrow, though, so be aware that this might limit flat-pack adventures. It's still a lot of space for a relatively small car.

You also get four cupholders (two forward, two aft), same again for bottle holders and a map pocket in the back of each front seat.

If you fancy towing, the 1600kg braked trailer towing capacity is mildly surprising and the 750kg unbraked pretty standard.

For 2020, Mitsubishi has done one of its annual tweaks and even then, it barely counts as a tweak. The ES is the same, starting at $29,990 but step into the LS and you have a new box to tick - ES 4WD, a $2500 premium over the $31,990 LS 2WD.

The Exceed is still available with both drivelines for either $36,690 or $39,190 depending on the number of driven wheels.

The car I had for the week was a top-of-the-range Exceed AWD, which meant 18-inch alloys, a six-speaker stereo, dual-zone climate control, front, side and reversing camera, keyless entry and start, front and rear parking sensors, active cruise control, auto LED headlights with auto high beam, head-up display, partial leather seats, power mirrors and windows, auto wipers and a space-saver spare.

The titchy little screen (in the big frame) perched on the dash features Apple CarPlay and Android Auto and looks pretty good doing it, which is a nice change for Mitsubishi. There is no sat nav, though, which at nearly forty large seems a bit stingy.

All Eclipse Cross variants get the same 1.5-litre four-cylinder turbocharged engine.

Outputs seem decent on paper, at 110kW/250Nm, but max torque is available from just 2000rpm, giving it a strong, punchy feeling as soon as you hop on the accelerator.

It certainly feels better than the lacklustre 2.0-litre non-turbo units in both the Qashqai (106kW/200Nm) and Sportage (114kW/192Nm).

The Eclipse cross can only be had with a continuously variable transmission (CVT). It was surprisingly unobtrusive, making little noise and it didn’t burden the accelerator pedal with much of the signature CVT rubbery response feel.

The ES and LS grades are front drive only, with the top-spec Exceed offering all-wheel drive.

The Eclipse Cross scores that rarest of things - a brand new Mitsubishi engine - weighing in at just 1.5-litres across four cylinders.

With the help of a turbo, the car's 1555kg kerb weight - the kids would call this 'a chonky boy' - is pulled along by 110kW/250Nm.

The entire range uses this engine and a continuously variable transmission, and in the Exceed AWD drives all four wheels.

There are eight 'fake' gears in the CVT that come into play when you use the paddles.

Mildly surprising (to me anyway) is the discovery that the 'Super All-Wheel Control' (S-AWC) uses a centre differential. An Isuzu MU-X doesn't even have one of those.

Official combined figures rate front-wheel drive Eclipse Cross variants at 7.3L/100km. Over my week of testing I landed on 9.0L/100km, but this was with mainly urban driving and some occasionally intense bouts of acceleration. Prior to the second half of the week it was averaging roughly 7.5l/100km. I believe a more forgiving driver could easily get it below 8.0.

Despite the turbocharger, the Eclipse Cross drinks a minimum of 91 RON regular unleaded petrol. It has a 63-litre tank.

The fuel sticker reckons you'll see 7.7L/100km, which seemed high to me. Turns out to be a little way off, even by fuel sticker standards, the cheeky 1.5-litre delivering 10.3L/100km.

The combination of hefty weight and no stop-start rather blunts the efficiency gains you might expect from a small capacity turbo, which is a pity.

I wasn’t expecting much from the Eclipse Cross. The ASX and Outlander a size above and below lack personality behind the wheel, so I was surprised to find the Eclipse Cross was better than it has any right to be.

Unlike its stablemates, it feels light and agile and the 1.5-litre was responsive and strong. So strong that it would make the wheels spin from a standstill under heavy acceleration, although it wouldn’t try and pull the wheel out of my hand (torque-steer) which is a good sign. 

Steering was accurate if a little light and engine noise was minimal. Tyre noise (not helped by the large alloys) and thudding from suspension components began to build up at speeds faster than 70km/h.

Unlike some front-drive SUVs it never felt too front-heavy and handled admirably through the corners.

This is probably due to the Eclipse Cross having a multi-link rear suspension set up rather than a cheaper torsion-bar. The rear would still become notably unsettled over bumpier corners, however.

The spongy seats and long suspension travel helped elevate you from the worse bumps on the road. For a comparison – It didn’t feel as stiff or sporty sporty as something like the Mazda CX-3 or CX-5, but not as soft as the Nissan Qashqai or as heavy as the Sportage. 

Things seem to be looking up - funky looks, nice interior, new engine. Must be all-new, right?

Nope. Sadly, underneath all this is the ageing ASX. That's not all bad, of course. The new engine is a huge improvement on the noisy 2.0-litre of the donor car. While the torque figure isn't exactly postcard-worthy, it works with the CVT to keep the car moving quietly and competently.

The CVT is a reminder of the ASX but seems slightly better calibrated in the Eclipse Cross. It's still not great, but the fact it's quieter is a big bonus.

The steering wheel from the ASX is both a predictor and a reminder of what the car is like to drive - thoroughly uninteresting.

It does handle better than the ASX, but that's not at all difficult. The low rolling resistance tyres are fine at moderate speeds but you have no idea what they're doing through the wheel - the electric assistance filters out absolutely everything, even more than the Kluger.

But few people are buying Mitsubishis for dynamic superiority - the Cross rides nicely and its multi-link rear end will be welcomed by rear seat passengers for the smooth ride it delivers.

The brakes are good, too, with decent pedal feel and none of the inconsistency of other Mitsubishis.

Loaded into the Exceed are seven airbags, ABS, stability and traction controls, forward AEB, adaptive cruise control, a reversing camera, lane departure warning, lane change assist, blind spot monitoring and rear cross traffic alert.

Added to that is a tricky device that helps prevent unfortunate accidental acceleration events when you're pootling along at under 10km/h.

Mitsubishi reckons that will protect people and objects within four metres front or back but the dog wouldn't stand still long enough for me to test that function. I'm quite taken with it as a concept.

To keep the smaller folk you carry firmly in place you can fix their seats with either the two ISOFIX points or three top-tether anchors.

The Eclipse Cross scored a maximum five ANCAP stars in December 2017.

The Eclipse Cross is covered by Mitsubishi’s five-year/unlimited kilometer warranty. That’s up to spec with most competitors like Hyundai, Honda and Mazda, while beating out the less-than-impressive three-year warranties offered by Suzuki and Toyota.

The competitor to beat is still the Kia Sportage with its seven year/unlimited kilometer coverage. Mitsubishi offers capped price servicing, but for some reason it only lasts 36 months, two years shorter than the life of the warranty. Strange. 

Regardless, the Eclipse Cross requires attention every 15,000km or 12 months and costs $300 for the first service then $400 for the remaining two.

Mitsubishi offers a five year/100,000km warranty and a 12 month membership to your local motoring organisation. Return to Mitsubishi for servicing and you get another 12 months.

Speaking of which, your dealer expects to see you every 12 months and as part of the capped-price servicing you'll pay no more than $199 each for the first three services.