A 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage, yesterday
A 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage, yesterday

Mitsubishi has announced that the subcompact Mirage will receive significant updates for the 2017 model year. The current version of the Mirage has met with sharp criticism in the automotive press, despite being named Best New Product of 2014 by Shitty Stuff Magazine.

“We haven’t just redesigned the Mirage,” said Maurice Fedora, chief spokesman and glutton for punishment at Mitsubishi cars. “We’ve taken an in-depth look at the way we design and engineer our vehicles and made some fundamental changes to the way we do business.

“For example, one of the major operational decisions we made was to insist that our chief designer actually design the Mirage’s new front fascia himself, instead of handing his four-year-old son a box of brightly-colored crayons and a drawing pad, as he did for the current version of the Mirage,” Fedora explained.

Besides the refreshed styling, the 2017 Mitsubishi Mirage will get revised suspension tuning and a more powerful engine.

“Our suspension engineer recalibrated the springs, dampers and sway bars based on real-world testing results,” he continued. “This differs greatly from the process he followed for the current car, which involved falling asleep at his desk and drooling into his keyboard.”

Automotive journalists frequently complained about the sluggish acceleration from the Mirage’s 74 horsepower three-cylinder engine.

“It turns out that our chief powertrain engineer was under the mistaken impression that he was only allotted 500 horsepower for his entire career, so he’s been trying to spread it out slowly,” Fedora explained. “Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to convince him otherwise, so the 2017 Mirage will only get four additional horsepower. We have, however, put the letters ‘GT’ on the trunk, which should help improve the Mirage’s 0-60 time to well under eight minutes.”

Fedora says he hopes that by explaining the reasons for the Mirage’s initial crappiness, he can clear up some misconceptions about the way the automotive industry works.

“A lot of people in the media think that when a car appears to have been designed by idiots, its shortcomings are in fact the result of many carefully-weighed decisions and compromises based on market trends and opportunities in specific segments,” he told Autoblopnik. “But that’s not necessarily the case. Sometimes a car really is designed by idiots.”

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