Mitsubishi Attrage (2020-present) review: Bahrain's cheapest sedan to run, not to drive
3.2/5MotorsSouq Editorial Team
Buy an Attrage if your priority is the lowest fuel, insurance and maintenance bill of any new sedan sold in Bahrain and you mostly drive around the island rather than merging onto fast causeway traffic daily. The three-cylinder engine is genuinely strained at highway speed with the air conditioning maxed out in summer — test that exact scenario before signing.
Pros
- Lowest realistic fuel, insurance and service cost of any sedan sold here new
- Boot space genuinely large for the car's footprint
- Good rear legroom for the segment
- Cheap, simple three-cylinder mechanicals
Cons
- 78hp struggles at highway speed with AC on in summer
- CVT holds revs high under load, feels strained
- Basic interior materials
- Noticeable three-cylinder thrum at idle
The Attrage exists for one reason: to be the cheapest car Mitsubishi can sell as a proper four-door sedan rather than a hatchback, and it succeeds by grafting a boot onto the Mirage's platform and running the same 1.2-litre, three-cylinder MIVEC engine. The result is a car that, driven gently around Bahrain's speed-limited roads, sips fuel at a rate few conventional petrol sedans can match and offers a boot genuinely larger than its compact footprint suggests.
The engine is the whole story
Seventy-eight horsepower moving a light car sounds workable until you actually merge onto the King Fahd Causeway or accelerate past a truck on the Sheikh Khalifa highway with the air conditioning working flat-out against a Bahraini summer — the CVT holds revs high and progress is unhurried in a way that a base Sunny or Accent simply doesn't share. This is a car built for gentle island driving, not a car that disguises its three-cylinder origins under load.
The three-cylinder character does show up as a slight thrum at idle that some owners notice and others don't, and it settles once rolling. Interior space for the segment is genuinely good — rear legroom benefits from the Mirage's short front overhang — but material quality is basic, in keeping with the price.
Ownership
Running costs are the Attrage's entire proposition and they deliver: real-world fuel consumption in the mid-five-litres-per-100km range in mixed Bahrain driving, low insurance premiums given its modest power output, and a small, simple engine that independent and dealer workshops both handle cheaply. Buyers cross-shopping a used compact hatchback should seriously consider a new Attrage instead — the running-cost gap against a five-year-old competitor is smaller than it looks.