Prime
A Vitz or a Colt?
What you need to know:
- To buy a Vitz RS 1.5l Mt (2011 model) or the Colt Ralliart version R (2012 model or thereabout), that is the question. It is said that the Colt is sportier and faster but how reliable is it and is it better than a Vitz? Does it meet your low fuel consumption needs?
When you are walking on thin ice, you might as well tap dance. The thing with performance cars, irrespective of stature — whether it is a V8 AMG or the teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy 1500cc fours in the hot hatches is that nobody buys them primarily for their reliability.
While rational car buyers count miles per gallon, the rest of us with brains addled by the harbingers of heady happiness that are hedonism and haste have haughtily hugged a different parameter count -- smiles per gallon.
Reliability and fuel economy play second fiddle along with any other criteria one may choose to apply. The primary motivator is the car must make us happy first and foremost.
That being said, if it is reliability you want, then just buy the Vitz RS and call it a day. It is the safe, unimaginative choice for the risk-averse. It has the engine from a Corolla, but supercharged for the newer car, possibly.
In 2011, there was an overlap of Vitz models, so which one are we talking about? The XP90 or the latest XP130? How much performance are you ceding to the Colt anyway? I don’t really care and it doesn’t really matter, unless you intend to sort your street beefs using spec sheets and Wikipedia.
In actual driving, a supercharged chainsaw and a turbocharged dot matrix printer have only so much they can buzz at each other that is of interest to people like us who drive real cars.
(I may be full of arrogance at the moment because I have recently been driving a 570hp AMG Mercedes and the hair on my chest just grew a little thicker.) I may be more civil next week when the adrenalin wears out from my bloodstream.
(Full disclosure: the braggadocio aside, the Colt Ralliart is a baby Evo that can take down more substantial vehicles with ease, to the surprise and embarrassment of the hitherto unwitting drivers.
I insist I don’t really care what the brochures say but I have driven a first-generation Vitz RS, which is quick in its own way, and I have driven a Colt Ralliart, which is genuinely quick, period. Unless you supercharge the Vitz, your only hope lies in its lower C-of-G and compact dimensions to compensate in tight switchbacks; otherwise on more open roads, you are not catching up to a Colt Ralliart.)
Let us now talk about the Colt R’s engine. It is a 4G15T; which means it is a relative of the power plant that motivates the Lancer Evolution, but with slightly less trouser endowment as far as cubic inches go — about a pint less.
There is a turbo, there is an intercooler, there are double overhead camshafts from last week’s lecture and there is MIVEC — Mitsubishi’s version of variable valve timing. All this means there is plenty to go wrong; and sometimes it does, but mostly if you start fiddling with the engine under the guise of “tuning” and are not sure of what you are doing. Otherwise the engine seems pretty bulletproof for what it is and not much has been documented as problematic.
Tip:
Forget tuning the tall, narrow, torque-steering Colt and spend your money on a pukka Lancer Evolution instead. It may be a while before you feel like you need more power.
Adapted from Daily Nation
