5dr Auto

An award winning citi car

Both my wife & I wanted a change from our Fiat Panda semi automatic and we both fell in love with the cheeky red Mitsubishi I-Car turbo after a test drive.
It has since fulfilled all of our expectations bar a poor reception radio which we understand is more suited to the original Japanese home market as only 300 of the petrol cars were sold in the UK in 2007 & 2008.
It keeps up with traffic on the motorway although having read up on it's original 2007 test reports it was never intended or even designed as a long distance cruiser.
This cars forte is tootling down our narrow local Kent lanes driving to local beauty spots or to our local pub for a pub lunch where one of us sticks to a non alcoholic beer wine or cider while the other enjoys a pint of our local brews, or driving to the bigger village around three miles drive away to visit the nearest Waitrose, hair stylist or petrol station.
Or to pick up our younger daughter down from London at our nearest train station along with her partner along with their airline cabin style cases in the boot.
The 35 litre petrol tank gets filled up when needed and we don't really care what the miles per gallon is, suffice to say that when we picked up the car from the vendor in Hampshire and drove it home the seventy odd miles to our village in Kent the petrol tank was still about half full at the end of the journey so make what you will of that.
This fifteen year old car comes very well equipped with air conditioning, electric windows all around, an easy to use full four speed automatic gear box, a good heater and good head room for the tallest member of our extended family.The engine is situated under the rear seats so the boot is not particularly large however if there are only the driver and a front seat passenger then the rear seats fold flat to give the car more than adequate rear luggage space.
By the way the paintwork is still bright & shiny with only the odd dink, or stone chip having been garaged by the previous owner and the cabin including all four seats is in very good condition with no rips or signs of wear.
It suits us just fine. By the way we consider the shape to have stood the test of time very well indeed with bystanders asking what it is and telling us how cute the shape is. On a trip to Canterbury one weekend we even had Japanese tourists point out the car and tell us what lovely condition the car is and that they are surprised to see one so far from their Japanese home island!
On looking up the history we found that only 300 of these Kei cars were imported into the UK by Mitsubishi in 2007 and 2008 as after that they switched to the full electric and other than that identical I-MIEV cars which were sold until 2016 along with a badge engineered Citroen C Zero & a Peugeot I-on electric cars.
I have just purchased a full set of outer body panels from an on line shop for a tenner. The vendor told me that he wished he had put a sensible minimum price as he had expected a buying frenzy for the parts which never materialised with only myself being the canny buyer. I'm currently looking for a better Bluetooth radio CD from one of the later electric cars as the stylish original's binnacle does not have a particularly good radio station coverage though the CD sound is very good with multiple speakers and tweeters which the car came out with. The car came with two keys: one being a fob type & the other which fits the drivers door lock and also two small items which fit into the anti theft devise, there is a flashing red light and you have to fit the devise to this when it goes out you can insert the ignition key to start the car when you turn that.
We are both etired and intend to keep this quirky little car till we both stop driving and one of our daughters tells me that she would gladly take the car over should that be the case.

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