Faults:

Front brake rotors warped and needed replacing at 55,000 k.

Otherwise this has been a reliable car.

General Comments:

A very honest reliable family car - not huge, but not small - that packs a punch if you stomp your right foot!

The cabin is a pleasant place to be with standard climate control air conditioning, CD player, power windows etc.

The rear air con vents for back seat passengers is a good feature too.

This car handles very well, and is more than capable on twisty roads - it's no sports car, but an admirable compromise between budget family car and performance sports sedan.

The safety features of ABS, ALL WHEEL DRIVE, front and side air bags and seat belt pre tensioners, coupled with ride, handling, comfort and price make this worth consideration if you're looking for a medium sized, well appointed budget family car.

One thing to note, that if you buy a Magna, don't expect great resale $$. Put simply, this is not due to quality, but when Mitsubishi couldn't sell them all straight away when new, they discounted them BIG TIME, and this has affected values ever since.

Faults:

There was a problem with a foul 'rotten egg' or sulphur smell coming from the car. The catalytic converter was replaced under warranty - fixed problem temporarily. Smell still happens occasionally, but now using premium unleaded (lower sulphur content), so the problem is less often.

Car would shake at the lights, idle was too high and accelerator pedal would 'stick' occasionally. All 3 were fixed with a 5 minute DIY throttle cable adjustment.

General Comments:

It is fully loaded for such an inexpensive car - power everything, even the drivers seat is 6 way electrically adjustable. Looks good for a family car and performs very well for a large and heavy FWD. Leaves V6 Commodores in your rear view, and even gives the V8 variants a run for their money.

The car is very comfortable to drive, as the steering wheel is extremely light - however this could also be seen as a negative as you can hardly feel the road.

The sports mode transmission (semi-automatic) is a nice feature, but not very sporty as downshifts are strongly limited based on your speed. The gearing of the 4spd auto trans is also a bit poor, the first gear is great, but the second gear is far too long as you can reach well over 130km/h in 2nd.

Fuel consumption is not bad for a 3.5L V6 - 12.9L/100km, but at current fuel prices, it can cost up to $100 to fill her up.

At first the new front-end design was hard to look at, but it has grown on me and I am now a fan of the look.

Faults:

Back brake light (interior in back window) fell out, other small stuff.

General Comments:

Pretty good and reliable cars for the money you spend. Economy is good on the open road and not back around town. Depreciation is a worry, but all cars this size are suffering. I recommend one simply on the value and reliabity stakes. You just can't get another car in the same category with this much fruit for this price. We paid AU$16k for a 18 month old car with another 3.5 years of new car warranty and 45,000k on the clock. It drives well and yes the looks are not that flash, but for a run about for kids etc you can't beat them.