Crossover. I cannot be ploughing a lonely furrow of confusion when I say that this is a word that confects and conjures a cavalcade of curious and conflicting images in the whirling windmills of my mind. It is an item that brings up thoughts of Cold War conniving or trans-gender kniving just as surely as it relates to those items propelled by that most internal of combustion.
The word looms and thunders like a dinosaur in the dining room once more today as I find myself confronted with a beast that has been splashed with his most obtuse of appellations.
Yet the crossover before me is no sly spy or tranny with a fanny for I am inside Mitsubishi’s new high rider for those who have precious little mud to plug nor roads to be off and it goes by the name of three simple letters – A S and X.
So, let’s find out if this soft-roader can play hard. First impressions are of plentiful poke from a directly injected diesel mill that raises the curtain on a new era of variable valve cam cleverness for the oil burner, so that the ASX lunges for the horizon like a stabbed stallion.
Helping me to row this car along with the vim of a Cambridge cox is steering as sharp as a needle in a knackers and a shift as slick as a Louisiana beach. But how will she kiss when you take her to a little club called ‘corners’.
I alight on a set of switchbacks that will truly test the mettle of this crossed up crossover cross-roader. They will also take me significantly nearer to Wisbech. Let’s make this happen…
First impressions are of the kind of grip that could suck the piss from a pigeon. The ASX may walk tall but it’s not going to bend when you show it a bend. We pile in hotter and hotter until we’re pedalling at gas mark 10 and still this crosshatch stays in the crosshairs, never missing the target that we call ‘apex’.
For one especially nuggety curve I pile in hard, slam shut the well hammered throttle and feel for a pico-second the tail stepping wide. I simply caught it with a dab of oppo and I was away.
The Mitsubishi ASX 3 1.8 DiD is a bitch. And I spanked it.
Troy Queef is Executive Associate Editor-At-Large for DAB OF OPPO magazine
