Mitsubishi's Ralliart Colt has only been in our hands for a few weeks now but it's been pretty busy racking up the mileage. It whisked us down to McLaren earlier in the month to listen to Ron Dennis's plans for his new road cars; it's been back at its Mitsubishi HQ home in Cirencester where I swapped it for the day for its mad FQ-400 Lancer Evo X relative; and in a variety of airport car parks while I've been off driving lots of very exciting new metal.
Anything stand out...?
One thing never fails to impress is that even in a month that's included drives in Ferrari's 599 GTB, Porsche's 911 GT3, Audi's R8 V10 among others the Colt Ralliart never fails to put a grin on my face when I get back to it in the various airport car parks it spends a lot of nights in. It's pretty simple and inexpensive, the Colt Ralliart having something of an old-school hot-hatch feel to it. I like that.
It's surprising how indifferent a reception the Colt gets among some of my colleagues in the press - many quickly dismissing it. They're missing out though, the 147bhp turbocharged 1.5-litre engine giving it respectable performance - 62mph arriving in 7.4 seconds - and its taut chassis delivering decent precision too. The steering feels a bit odd, its weighting very heavy when parking, but even so it's possible to squeeze the Ralliart into the tiniest of spaces. That's very handy where I live.
...and for the wrong reasons?
If the famously meticulous Ron Dennis had seen it in the car park at McLaren he'd have no doubt spotted the rather wonkily placed Turbo badge on the bottom of the kerbside door and had it evicted.
My long termer has a habit of becoming an extension of my living space, more often than not holding kit like golf clubs in the boot. In the Ralliart that's never going to happen as the boot is pretty tiny. It's also got the most annoying parcel shelf going. You need to lift it yourself and it's got a habit of falling off. If it hasn't it's all too easy to leave it sitting up and losing half the view out of the rear window. Thankfully a rolled-up road atlas is long enough to reach it from the driver's seat to push it down back into position.
Where next?
We've no big trips for the Ralliart planned as yet, instead it being the perfect companion for buzzing around between airports and coping with the hectic schedule of day-to-day life. It's great fun around London where its decent performance and diminutive proportions make it feel as quick as a bike in traffic. We'll be dreaming up some jobs for it to get stuck into soon, and will be chucking the odd bicycle in the back and heading out into the countryside. It'll be fun on those winding lanes, so much so we might not bother with the cycling...
