Unexpected Eclipse
With apologies to Victor Hugo
It’s quite common for the East Coast of New Zealand to experience extra terrestrial phenomena first, so where better for Jane Warwick to take the Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross on a mission of discovery and sun chasing?
It’s a bossy sort of a car, really. Beeping here because I’ve crossed a lane marker, beeping there because it thought I was too close to a post, inexplicitly flashing BRAKE! across the dash for no reason at all that I could see. It beeped petulantly when I forgot to push the handbrake button, squawked indignantly when I ignored its navigation advice for a route of my own, and suddenly asked – quite out of the blue – who I wanted to phone. My navigator and I did a double-take at the console, looked at each other, then Chrissie said rather tentatively “Simon?’ and within seconds he picked up.
It was a bit mean, I guess, phoning someone who is frazzled and put-upon negotiating Auckland traffic, to tell them what a beautiful day it was cruising down to Hawke's Bay. But I blame the car for that, too, because if we hadn’t been startled into saying the first name that popped into our heads, we might have been more selective about whose nose we rubbed into our good fortune. It was a beautiful day, the country was at its stunning best and we were cruising. And that would be my only ‘complaint’ about the 2018 Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross – it is such a smooth and seamless ride thanks to the Super-all Wheel Control system (S-AWC) that I
❝The Escape paid no attention to the cluggy grass, was nimble over rocks and fast on the sand.❞
found it quite hard at first to keep to the speed limit. The head-up display that comes standard with the VRX model would have been especially handy. When we came to a settlement and had to slow down to 50kmh I was at first startled; it felt strangely slow and not a little bit odd. Proof, therefore, that the Eclipse Cross yearns for the open road and the high offroading skies.
My opening paragraph might give the impression I drove badly but I was merely testing out the safety features. That the console asked who we wanted to phone, was due to the Smartphone Link Display Audio System – for us it meant Apple Carplay – which was apparently delving deep into Chrissie’s contact list while she was investigating the sharp seveninch display, which can also be scrolled through with Mitsubishi’s new touch pad in the centre console by the gear.
Somehow she inadvertently touched some command that brought to life the ‘who do you want to ring?’ query. After our initial surprise we were dead impressed with the option although I later tried it with some other contacts and found you could really only ask it to find standard names. My nephew, for example, is Yegor. Sounds like Egor but spelled with a ‘Ye, and the system couldn’t find him.
So if you have phone contacts with traditionally spelled Irish names, for example, you won’t be phoning them from the car unless, perhaps, you spell them phonetically in your contacts list. But maybe that is an Apple thing rather than an Eclipse Cross thing, and anyway it is unfair to ring
someone just to brag about your day being probably superior to theirs, just to get attention.
And we got attention anyway. A police car going the other way did a U-turn and pulled in behind me when I stopped for coffee. He wandered over and I held my breath. Had the car not made one of its admonishing beeps when it should have? Could I actually use the ‘it was the car’s fault’ as a bona fide defence instead of ‘it’s a fair cop’? However, “This looks sharp,” he said, peering in. “What is it? Good to drive? I’m looking to upgrade my SUV.”
This happened three times – being admired, that is; not being pulled over – including the driver of a Mitsubishi Outlander who came over with a “What the heck? When did this happen?”
We rolled into Napier later than expected due to road works after a recent storm battering the East Coast, but it didn’t feel like we’d done a long trip. The ride was smooth, the seats more than comfortable, the dash so easily accessible. The model also has CVT Auto with eight-speed Sports Mode and Paddle Shift, so when you roll on out, you can really let rip.
Later when we headed out for dinner I let my Napier-based nephew take the wheel. He grew up in a 4WD environment, has a bushwhacking marque of his own, and works for a custom luxury aluminium motor yacht and fishing boat manufacturer, so he’s used to putting transport of one kind or the other through its respective paces. He took the Eclipse Cross out twice and returning, backed it up his narrow drive to park it deftly in the small and tight parking spot by the back door. He was impressed. “Whoa!” he said. That’s the Millennial vernacular for ‘impressed’.
My other benchmark driver was my travelling companion who drives a luxury AWD marque of her own. However, she was taken by the Eclipse Cross, saying in comparison her own SUV felt like a truck.
Down on one of Napier’s rocky shores, the Super All Wheel Control (S-AWC) was excellent. In fact, the difference between settings was dramatic really. Tossing up whether the setting should be SNOW because we were on a very slippery but not cluggy muddy surface, or GRAVEL because there were rocks and potholes, showed us two very different driving experiences. I was confident the vehicle could handle both surfaces without a hitch.
Napier has the best display of Art Deco architecture in the world outside of Miami. Miami got its facade because its second building boom was during that period. Napier got its Art Deco splendour because of the 1931 earthquake. During the rebuild architects embraced Art Deco, not only because it was the architecture of the time, but Art Deco style was considered that of a brave new world. For Napier in the aftermath of what is still considered this country’s greatest natural disaster, a brave new world is what they all desperately wanted. And that feeling continues with Rocket Lab’s launch facility on the Mahia Peninsula, just across the bay from the city.
The Napier self-drive tour costs just $1. That is for the map and the rest is up to you.
The route goes from downtown Napier over the hill to Ahuriri and the Art Deco suburb of Marewa. Also included on the route is the Earthquake Memorial Grave at Park Island, the nearby Hastings and Havelock North, the vineyards with their cellar doors, orchards, Cape Kidnappers and the world’s largest mainland gannet colony.
The Eclipse Cross has a Stop and Go function, which brakes the vehicle down to a dead stop. This is great for those myriad times we needed to stop and admire the view, bringing instant silence in which to contemplate. Acceleration seamlessly begins again once you step on the gas.
And that was the key word, really – seamless. Everything about this trip seemed like that. From the push-button start to the boot laden with juicy Hawke's Bay oranges and lemons, bags of avocados so very much cheaper than my local supermarket and a couple of bottles of wine from a cellar door, this vehicle lifted itself away from my usual ‘that was fun’ to ‘I want one’.