Published:
6 April 2012There is nothing drastically wrong with the Mitsubishi ASX’s interior, but it is not outstanding in the way it looks or the way it functions.
The driver has a good range of adjustment in both the seat and the steering wheel, but a lack of lateral and lumbar support makes the seat less than comfortable over long periods of time. A bright LCD screen displays a useful amount of information between the two main dials, which also look crisp and are easy to read.
The interior fails to offer much visual interest but it gets an impressive list of standard kit and the controls are laid out clearly, if not totally intuitively. There are some obvious signs of cost-cutting, such as the cheap plastics around the door handles.
Rear passengers have a good amount of legroom and headroom and their seat backs tilt, but there are no individual sliding seats, as found in some rivals. Still, the 60/40 split bench will seat two adults comfortably and three with some liberal elbow tucking – and when folded flat, it gives way to a boot with a volume of 1193 litres. That may be a better load-carrying capacity than the Nissan Qashqai’s maximum 860 litres, but it’s still a long way off others in the class such as the Peugeot 3008 (1604 litres) and the Hyundai ix35 (1436 litres). A seats-up capacity of 442 litres is also average.
Visibility is fine to the rear, but the forward view is less impressive. The high-set door mirrors are useful for checking the rear three-quarters but frequently become obstructive otherwise, and they’re not helped by the raked-back, thick A-pillars.
