2001 Montero Limited

My wife was in the market for a new car late in 2000 so as the "car expert" of the family I was sent out to find our next vehicle purchase, we had pretty much decided that a SUV would best suit our needs in the coming years, so my favorite part of picking out a new vehicle was at hand; the test drives.

I spent the better part of 3 weekends going from dealer to dealer driving every SUV on the market, from the small Honda CRV to the huge Ford Excursion. I as most men wanted the Ford Excursion for it's large features and large engine and ability to carry all you own and all your friends at the same time, but being realistic I remembered who the primary driver of the new vehicle would be and decided to stick to the mid sized SUV's.

After driving too many vehicles with large blind spots, not enough room, no power, and some with enough tacky rails and molding on them to build another vehicle I had all but given up on the SUV idea, but on the way home I stopped at my local Mitsubishi dealer and looked around, what I found was the answer to all my needs of our next car.

I test drove a 2001 Montero Limited that had just been taken off a car hauler that morning, it was fully loaded with everything but some audio options which I later added, I have driven a number of high end cars before and as you have read a number of SUV's so I felt I was ready to give the salesman a verbal lashing as all those before him about what I did'nt like or what they should have done different, as to my surprise the Montero Limited was a refreshing change to the previous SUV's I had taking around the block. It had plenty of head room ( I am 6'5" ) and plenty of leg room, I really enjoyed the placement of all gauges and controls, none of which were to "clustered" and I didn't need the help of the salesman to figure out anything.

Power delivery was nice and smooth and I didn't even noticed when gear changes occured, the Montero Limited is equipped with a manual sport shift feature that really worked well, automatic shift points are very reasonable and gave good merging ability onto the highway.

The Montero Limited comes equipped with leather and power everything, it has all the features found in higher end cars without the price tag to go along with them, it also has a very large power sunroof that really doesn't affect cabin wind or noise levels even at highway speeds.

The Montero Limited will seat 7 passengers, from my experience the load would be 5 adults and 2 children, the 3rd row seating is ok but I would have rather had a deep well hatch space instead of the rear seat, it really isn't that functional.

I will now express my opinion on the gas milage issue I have read about in previous reviews of this product, if you are so worried about gas mileage you need to buy a Civic, if you want to haul around your family in style and comfort and possibly tow some toys with you it is time to step up into the SUV market and what better way to do this than the 2001 Mitsubishi Montero Limited, and 440 miles to the tank full is not bad for a SUV of the Montero's size.

I will finish off by saying that after a year and a half my wife still loves "her" Montero Limited and has yet to complain about anything with the vehicle, we also stopped buy the dealership the other day to look at the 2002 models and they have'nt changed a thing, I think they are on to something.