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BabyDrive Verdict

I went to Cricks Mitsubishi in Nambour on the Sunshine Coast, where they kindly let me review the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross. I had no pre-ideas of this car but my first thoughts were it feels active and sporty from its exterior styling and this I found carried on into the interior. So I was keen to find out how this little SUV would sum up as a BabyDrive.

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The model I tested was the top spec Exceed AWD CVT, so it had all the bells and whistles! Some I found useful others were just completely unnecessary!

I could install two child seats in the back, in the outer seats. A rear-facing Britax Unity infant capsule and a rear-facing Britax Graphene.

There are ISO Fix in those two outer seats, the connectors poke out of the seat base and were easy to locate and connect to.

There are three top tether points one in each of the rear seat backrests, easily accessible through the boot. They are hidden within the seat back fabric and I found them easy to connect to.

Installing the child seats was easy and I found that the space in the cab for front passengers was good with rear-facing child seats installed.

In the boot, space was a little tighter and with the rear seats in their furthest back position, I did struggle fitting the two double strollers in!

When the boot was empty I fitted 10 shopping bags. With the Mountain Buggy Duet twin stroller, I fitted 2 bags alongside it.

The Britax Flexx Tandem stroller just fitted with two shopping bags as well.

The Britax Flexx single stroller was a much easier fit, with four shopping bags.

The little Britax Holiday compact stroller fitted neatly using 9 shopping bags.

The Eclipse Cross feels like the boot is a tad too small and that space has been given to the cabin where there is a good amount of space. You can adjust the distribution of space between the boot storage and the cabin legroom by sliding the seats back and forward (the seats slide and fold 60:40).

Visibility is a little compromised by the lack of small triangular windows at the rear side pillars creating a dark tunnel effect in the back. The spoiler split back windscreen creates some blind spot areas too, especially around the rear side pillars. With the addition of the sunroof, there is something beautiful in the design of the glass that goes all the way over the car in an arch from the boot to the bonnet! Especially along forest lined roads 🙂

I think the touch pad control on the central console is unnecessary and just a gimmick. I didn't find it useful at all, I managed to change the radio volume using it JUST but other than that I don't think it added anything and I'd have much rather the cost of that was used elsewhere to improve more important things!

The media screen is nice and clear, but the beeps are really annoying, everything beeps to let you know about anything and everything in the Eclipse Cross it seemed!! I couldn't work out how to turn them off so perhaps worryingly you actually can't!

The head-up display is a nice feature as I do find them good to use. The manual button to bring it out of the dash again feels like a complete gimmick!

There is a little wind or road noise while driving and the car becomes lurchy when accelerating.

I did have a scary experience on my test drive where the intelligent cruise control emergency stopped because of traffic on the other side of the road. It obviously thought it was on my side and slammed on the brakes at 80km/h. Luckily there was no one behind me or anyone else in the car!

The Eclipse Cross scored a five-star ANCAP safety rating in 2017 and has seven airbags as standard.

BabyDrive Indepth

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