LA 2015: Mitsubishi Actually Fixed The 2017 Mirage, You Guys

Seriously, they did! Look at it! Instead of being some anonymous South Asian egg, the Mitsubishi Mirage now looks like an anonymous European egg.

Okay, okay. It isn’t going to set your heart alight with desire, but Mitsubishi has done a stellar job upgrading the Mirage with the few resources it has at its disposal. This little subcompact hatchback will be the first Mitsubishi ever to offer Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Its 1.2-liter MIVEC three-cylinder engine gets an ever-so slight bump to 78 horsepower (+4 over the current Mirage). The Japanese automaker even gave the exterior and interior a fairly thorough re-work considering this is a mid-cycle refresh. And considering this is Mitsubishi we’re talking about here.

Those of you who were totally sold on the Rockford Fosgate special edition, fear not! You can still get that in the new Mirage, too, though minus the badging that tells thieves which car to hit in the Kroger parking lot.

The big news, even though the new 2017 Mirage now sports a design worthy of being on a dealer lot in the 21st century, is the new infotainment system available as standard in SE and GT models.

As before, the Mirage will be available with a five-speed manual transmission as standard throughout the trim range, while a continuously variable transmission is available for those people who want all the miles per gallon. Mitsubishi said the new Mirage will achieve better fuel economy than its predecessors thanks to a newly improved 0.27 Cd, but didn’t release actual numbers. Don’t be surprised if the improvement is a mere 1 mpg on the combined cycle.

The new 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage will arrive at dealers sometime in 2016, we guess, since Mitsubishi didn’t actually tell us in the press pack.