Our 2008 Mitsubishi Galant GTS got a send-off last week, after having spent just under 2 years with us. Our fleet of four cars needed to be trimmed down, so it had to go. We find it rather unbelievable that so few people contacted us when the “for sale” advert went up, compared to the eleventy-million calls we got when we sold our 15-year-old Toyota Corolla.
Our long-term Mitsubishi Galant continues to run strongly without any hiccups, despite raking up over 40,000 km in less than a year due to regular Dubai-Abu Dhabi runs. Besides the minor A/C fix few months ago, there really has been no costs involved besides our self-imposed 10,000 km interval services with the major one done recently at 80,000 km on the clock. However, as mentioned in our last report we faced a minor issue and that is the battery finally crapped out. Mind you, the battery was not changed since we bought it back in June 2011, so we guess its death was pretty much near.
We still remember the time when we used to service our cars at ghetto garages and petrol stations, because we were not financially well-endowed back then. That was fine, considering we didn’t even own a car newer than 10 years at that time. Things change of course, and now we own four cars, all relatively newer, so we get almost all of them maintained at their respective dealerships. All except one — our 2008 Mitsubishi Galant GTS.
So why the hell are we comparing the 2012 Toyota Camry to the 2008 Mitsubishi Galant GTS? Because we actually own the Mitsubishi. Throw in the fact that for the price for a brand-new basic Toyota Camry, you can buy a brand-new top-of-the-range Mitsubishi Galant V6, and this starts to make even more sense.
It’s rather surprising what an effect we have on the popularity of certain models. While we haven’t bothered to put up an update on our 2008 Mitsubishi Galant GTS in a while now, we’ve been getting requests asking us more about the car. It seems some people are starting to consider the Galant as a viable alternative to the Japanese regulars, thanks to our endorsement.
Our 2008 Mitsubishi Galant GTS is now in full service, being used as a daily commuter for the Dubai-Abu Dhabi-Dubai slog every evening by my brother. So we racked up 3,000 km in less than a week.
Some of you may have noticed that my brother Marouf does not write news articles for us any more. That’s because he is now a web editor at a sports newspaper in Abu Dhabi. And that means he has to drive from Dubai to Abu Dhabi and back everyday, a distance of 270 km daily. We’d already sold our Peugeot 307 2.0 last year, I wasn’t going to have him rack up miles on my fuel-hog Jeep or my exotic BMW, and our Renault Safrane is in use by the Old Man of the house. So he was doing the daily road-trip in our trusty old 1997 Toyota Corolla,