Can’t un“sea” it.

InIn the early 90s, The Connecticut State police bought a fleet of 30 Mazda MX-6s. They were upgraded to cop spec and were incredibly hard to spot.

When I was living in a small city in northern New England, plainclothes cops were using two taxicabs for surveillance and undercover work. The department was provided the two cars by different cab companies, presumably, to curry favor from the department.

It may sound silly, but this reminds me of the time I let a kid from college play Gran Turismo 5 with all the aids turned off, and he couldn’t control even a relatively tame supercar like a Gallardo... buddy, this is what its like when you really uncork a car like this. And the F40 was probably the one that most made…

Man that last picture of the sideview brings me right back to the early aughts when this model Focus (the base version) was like every third car on the road. Not something you see too often anymore. But I always thought the SVT was neat.

I’m going NP as it’s clean, low-mileage rarity that will be as effective as migrane-strength Excedrin for easing a stress—related headache. It’s one of those cars that few will recognize or appreciate, but if you want a car that’s truly for your own enjoyment and not for showing off, this can’t be beat.

I wasn’t sure, but went Nice Price on this one. One owner, low miles, clean.

Nice Price.

“What are we gonna do tonight, Brain?”

NP since it isn’t ratted out. These are a blast to drive. 

In terms of raw depreciation in dollars, a new Mirage for $12k has to have the lowest potential depreciation of any car on the market. Even with 100k on the clock 10 years from now, there will be a floor for a running car of at least a few grand. You basically can’t ever lose more than $10k by owning one of these.

The Diesel maintenance regiment which you described is similar to my dads 81 Chevette diesel back in the 80’s and 90’s. Regular oil and filter changes along with fuel filter replacements and just one timing belt change kept it going for a mostly highway 200k. It regularly got around 50 mpg which for a cruder and…

What surprised me is that the weight on the weight on the 93 shows as 2083 pounds, and the 2024 shows as 2084.  I know it’s a different car but for the newer model to be basically the same weight is very surprising.   I initially expected that to be a substantial contributor to the newer car being slower.

The original Mirage back in ‘84 or thereabouts, had a turbo and a 4X2 overdrive transmission. Now that car was underappreciated!

Probably one of the coolest names assigned to a car, the Cyborg Mirage. I think that might have been aimed as a civic fighter. I wanna do a series of just obscure Mitsubishi’s and do a deep dive because we were robbed.

Exactly. The Mirage today is not in the same class as the Mirage then, which competed with Civic, Corolla, Sentra, Escort and even looked a lot like a then Protege. I had a rental Mirage around that time and thought it decent and easy to live with.

Well the old Mirage was really the Lancer, so it’s kind of an apples to oranges comparison. It would be more fair to compare it to a base model Colt from 1993, but I don’t think we got that in the states. Regardless, we lose something when there are no more basic, cheap cars to buy.

I was curious so I checked pricing.

Adjusted for inflation, the Mirage LS (the fast one) would only be $22k. I guess the closest thing would be the Civic hatch sport, or whatever they call the six-speed one with 160hp. But that’s more like $26k. Of course, it comes with eons more technology and safety in it...

I don’t know that this would merit their attention, given how distinctly proportioned the resultant kit is and how few are likely to be produced.