On Friday noon, we reached out to our Mitsubishi dealer and requested for a Cedia Sports test drive, he informed us that he is waiting for registration paper to come in for the test drive vehicle. Several calls until 10 pm and we had a good news! He received the papers and beauty was ready to roll.

The brand new beauty showed up at 7 am sharp on Saturday morning, we wanted it early to capture some fresh photos and also test drive it in peace.

I am not going to write loads of technical details about the vehicle, they are already captured in numerous test drive reports on team-bhp.

My idea of review is very simple. We have a Lancer Invecs and we are a very happy HM customer, for us it has been a hassle free ownership for last 3 years. Only thing that we miss in our Lancer are ABS and Airbags.

We have to add a new car/SUV to our garage in next couple of months and in the pursuit we have already test driven a dozen odd vehicles like Pajero, Fabia, Dezire, Safari, Linea, Punto, Xenon, Endeavour, Grand Vitara (2.0), Outlander, Innova, Corolla Altis and Cedia Spirit.

We were hooked to Outlander but right now it is out of budget, our budget is 10-12 Lac rupees.

With 2 sedans and 1 saloon, the obvious choice to add was a SUV/MUV to our garage, but in our budget the SUVs available were not able to please us as an indulging everyday driver and weekend traveller. And, Rishi could never compromise on his car purchase, I know he is hooked to Outlander so it was a futile effort to try and convince him on any other SUV. The next choice to look for was a three boxed sedan with ABS/Airbags as none of our other cars have ABS/Airbags. Since I am driving 150 KMs odd everyday on expressway we need these for the safety of the family.

We test drove Cedia Spirit earlier but Rishi loves his existing Lancer’s automatic tiptronic transmission so much that he was confident that HM would bring Invecs-II/III in Cedia sooner or later and refused to part with his Lancer until then.

With Cedia’s new refreshing avatar, The Cedia Sports, we decided to test drive again.

Since Rishi refuses to part with his Invecs, till he gets an autobox in Cedia or till we can afford Outlander. This car is more for me to drive around with Kids and of course for our extended weekend drives out of Delhi.

As I wrote earlier, I would not go in lot of technical details but this is 2.0 litre, 115 BHP Car.

What I liked about Cedia Sports:
• Very comfortable body hugging driver and co-driver seats. 4 ways height adjustment is a boon for lady drivers.

• GPS integrated and enabled Kenwood music system. I am tired of sticking a GPS unit on windshield which takes ages to get a GPS fix and also hampers the vision. Integrated GPS is a welcome step. I think Mitsubishi Cedia is first in this segment to ahve a factory fitted GPS with external antenna. The interface was very intuitive and friendly. Though for some reason every time I restarted the car, the time was getting reset, maybe I minor glitch which needs to be taken care of during PDI.

• Loads of space to keep knick-knacks, water bottles, cup holders.

• The rear seat was very comfortable, I prefer leather to fabric since lather is much easier to clean and maintain. The rear seat is not a bench, it is very well sculpted and much comfortable.

• Loads of space in the boot, just perfect for big bags, Rishi’s equipment, gadgets and Kid’s toys and gaming equipment. The access to boot from inside through the rear seat armrest is a very good feature specially when you have kids with you on long drives and you don’t want to store packed food inside the car cabin.

• Excellent Auto climate control just set the desired temperature and rest is all taken care of.

• Loads of space in footwall and a very comfortable dead peddle for those long drives.

• Car was steady as a rock on expressway and very manoeuvrable. The best part is the turning radius; I was able to turn it to our basement parking without any hesitation.
• Above all I liked the ABS enabled braking, I was able to stop the car from 90 to 0 KMPH without any skidding or loss of control. Airbags reassure you and you really feel very safe inside the car. Though I wish for additional side airbags and rear curtain airbags but with Cedia’s safe cocoon I am confident that I would never need them.

What I did not like:
• No audio controls on steering, I understand this is not possible with a sports steering.

• Multi information display is something, I would request Mitsubishi to try and include, this will be very helpful for lady drivers like me.

• Although the sparkling clear headlamps compliment well with new grill. I somehow liked the smoked headlights more which I saw in earlier Cedia Sports pictures.

As Rishi wanted to catch on some much needed sleep, I thought this post would be perfect to surprise him and as well as celebrate our journey so far on TGDC.

PS: This is not a detailed tech review; these are my thoughts as a busy homemaker driving 150 odd kilometres a day with kids to their school, extra classes, shopping and what not. Rishi and I took loads of exciting pictures, which I am sure he would be posting shortly.

Do share your comments and let me know if you enjoyed my first post on our journey to Auditions for Top-3.
-Poonam