(first posted 1/28/2016) The future is here; Computer-Controlled Suspension.
Well, it might have looked like some kind of a brick, but technologically it was very impressive in 1984. This article is also from R&T’s 1984 December issue:
Vintage R&T Road Test: 1984 Mitsubishi Galant
– Posted on January 28, 2022
I like this car a lot. Despite it being uncompetitive on paper, it just looks to me like the company told their engineers to make the best car they could. The company would then figure out how to sell it.
I disagree with the R/T author, the styling of this car could be nothing but Japanese, in fact nothing but Mitsubishi. The last USA Galant, the 04-12 model looks strikingly similar. The standard engine was even a more advanced version of the same engine.
All the electronic gee gaws on the very conventional suspension design reflect the time where electronics really were thought to be the answer to get to the next level of performance. Did this car get to that next level, of course not. The way traction control becomes stability control which eventually becomes self driving cars show’s that Mitsubishi was just early, not wrong.
The article falls down where it does not criticize the car for being so loud at 70 mph, or to getting such poor skidpad numbers despite having 60 series tires, quite aggressive for 84. These were issues Mitsu needed to work on and mentioning it would have been a help.
Interesting that the car had a 4sp auto in 1984. 70’s Colts had a lite duty torqueflite auto. Chrysler lacked a front drive 4 speed pre ultradive. Wonder whose transmission this car is using.
I saw one of these outside Houston this past weekend. It was in a fairly upper-middle class neighborhood where most cars are late model SUVs or quasi-premium sedans. I was first impressed with seeing it at all, then with the great condition it was in for its age, and finally, for the apparent ‘opulence’ of its interior. I agree, Mitsubishi was not wrong just early in a few ways. They could have gone on to compete with Acura and the lesser Lexuses (Lexi?) and Infinities.
The early Mitsubishis were actually impressive cars in certain respects. The feature content was unmatched at their price point, the quality of materials was excellent, and their styling, while subjective, was at least appealing and certainly anything but off-putting. Having driven an ’82 Dodge (Mitsubishi) Challenger and an ’85 Plymouth Conquest (yes the early Starion derived Conquest was marketed as a Plymouth), I really thought at the time that Mitsubishi was going to take off and become a Toyota rival in the US. Somehow by the mid ’90’s their model lineup consisted of “Squint, and you’ll think it’s a Toyota/Nissan”. Nothing set them apart by 2000, and with Acura, Infiniti and Lexus firmly planted in the picture by then it wouldn’t have mattered if the fit and finish and feature content was a cut above anyway. It’s been a little sad to see the brand fall to the also-ran status that it has over the past 2 decades.
Count me in as another big fan of these cars. Love the styling, love the technology. I never knew until this article just how advanced that suspension was–the part where it lowers the nose an inch at speed to improve wind resistance was impressive in 1993 when Lincoln borrowed the idea for the Mark VIII (though the entire car dropped, not just the nose). Mitsu beat them to it by almost 10 years!
I’ve heard that Mitsubishi’s dealer network in the 80’s was not well established in the hearltand or outside larger cities on the East Coast. Perhaps that’s a reason for this car’s lack of resounding success?
Give me a later model with the V6 and the composite lamps, and I’d be a happy camper.
Even in Japan, Mitsubishi is considered to be at the very least a “tier 2” car company. When I was in Japan in the 80s, I didn’t see that many Mitsubishi cars or dealerships and the dealerships I did see were quite small, looking like they had very little to offer. I did see a few Delica minivans and several …..Minicas (?).
For whatever reason, Mitsubishi is/was best known for it’s trucks of all sizes and mini-cars.
And it may be coincidental, but in most countries where Mitsubishi entered the market by way of a locally owned distribution network….or in the U.S. as a “captive import” they never seemed to recover from the separation from their “host”.
Where Mitsubishi is pretty strong, marketwise, is Southeast Asia. They may be the number 2 producer in Thailand (which is the biggest motor vehicle manufacturer in ASEAN).
Haven’t seen one of these in a long time.
In Australia we got these in wide-body form as the Mitsubishi Magna. They were extremely popular until the fragility of the automatic became known. Mitsubishi never seemed to recover from that.
We bought one in ’89. Interestingly it turned out to be the first fuel-injected manual the dealership had got in, and they were most impressed how it went. The car felt much more refined than equivalent Fords and Toyotas, and lasted us eleven years and 230,000km, when we replaced it with the ’00 Diamante I’m driving now.
These are a rare sight these days. And Mitsubishi is just a shadow of its former self, reduced to being an SUV and truck company that still beats out the occasional car.
We have the FWD Galants, Sigmas and the Aussie Magna version though they are very rare, they survived ok in manual providing the block didnt crack and you didnt buy an 84 that the roof pillars rusted out on, they werent a bad drive but with all the known faults resale value was nil.
Always liked our wagons. Smart shape.
Mum had a manual wagon, it was a good car. The auto version was complete shite though. Was it the same crap box that Chryslers in the U.S used?
I had a 5 speed sedan and the reason I sold it was the gearbox.
Nothing wrong, just got tired of changing gears in stop n go traffic after being at work all day.
It was a very solid well built car, felt much more substantial than the Toyota’s and Nissans of the day.
We had a curious failure of the shift mechanism in ours at about 150,000 km. You’d go to take off in first but the gearbox would be in third – somehow the 1-2 plane of the shifter didn’t communicate with first or second gears in the gearbox. The old EFI Astron II was a good motor for us, but it sure didn’t have the torque to run a close-ratio three speed with one of ’em being overdrive! I twigged almost immediately what had happened, but we were holidaying in the in the Dandenong Ranges at the time with two children – the prolonged holiday was nice, but the new clutch and shifter repairs weren’t cheap.
A guy I knew had a wagon with the automatic and knowing the biodegradable nature of the trans bought a manual writeoff to do a swap, except he failed to notice the firewalls are different and the auto model has no provision for the clutch arrangement, to be fair he’d had it several weeks before he managed to crowbar the bonnet open it had a rollover with a very heavy landing nose first.
Boy, do I miss velour seats like the one this Galant has. Wish they’d bring it back. Everything is either chintzy cloth or leather – you can even get leather interiors on economy cars…
And given the burlap-like qualities of today’s “cloth” interiors (if you can call that woven vinyl stuff cloth) springing for leather becomes a very attractive option.
…and it’s usually not even real leather anymore. Most of it is obviously vinyl but evidently most consumers are now so used to it they can’t tell the difference.
And yeah, today’s cloth can be awful. The cloth seats in my F-150 do feel like burlap, with the added bonus of being easily stained by plain water.
I went through a string of used Mitsus in the 1990s – ’88 Colt wagon, ’89 Colt Vista and ’90 Sigma. The Colt was simple and reliable. The Vista was very versatile with all the possible interior combinations, and the Sigma was the most luxurious Japanese car I had ever seen up to that point, the Lexus wasn’t even close. Unfortunately, both the Vista and the Sigma had serious mechanical issues, which really soured me on Mitsubishi. The Vista’s engine grenaded, and the Sigma required constant replacement of various expensive and hard to find parts. I absolutely loved the design, I was a real Mitsu fan for a while, but ultimately I just couldn’t justify the expense. But with the next generation of models, the design wasn’t there anymore either, and Mitsubishi became just an also-ran. The quality was there, the content level was amazing, they just needed to work on the reliability instead of trying to go mainstream and de-contenting like Toyota did.
Bastard offspring of an Audi 5000 and a Toyota Camry. Good genes, certainly.
“an electric sliding glass sunroof with an inner sunshade (great idea)”
Funny to think how this type of sunroof (or moonroof as they’re commonly called now) is available in just about every type of car. I remember the days of the solid, non-glass sunroofs, which are more or less obsolete now.
That makes me wonder, is a metal sunroof still offered by anyone? The last one I can think of is the 1996 Honda Prelude, but there is probably something newer.
My 2002 911 has metal.
Mitsubishis of the 80’s had the most “Euro” styling of the Japanese makers, in my opinion. The switches clustered on satellite binnacles on either side of the steering column are reminiscent of the Citroen CX/GSA instrument cluster. It would have been interesting to operate the turn signal paddle that flips up and down. The JDM and Euro versions looked markedly different and sleeker than the chrome-laden US version with quad sealed-beam headlights.
The Aussie Magnas had a much more conventional control layout, with the digital dash and turn signal paddle being reserved for the upmarket Elite model.
I got to drive one of these when my daughter’s friend needed someone to drive the one she’d bought out home to their farm. It was night, and the digital dash didn’t work. It was fun figuring out the different controls with no interior lighting!
Wife and I bought an ’86 version of the Galant new, equipped exactly as this test vehicle was, with the ESC suspension, moonroof, etc. it was a wonderful little car. Would have kept it longer but for our 2-person family getting larger.
I drove the V6 model of one of these as a loaner for a few weeks in the late 90’s/ early 2000’s. Was a very nice car, very comfortable and had really good dark blue plush velour upholstery, about the nicest I’ve ever experienced. I echo Say What’s sentiments, I’d seriously consider a new car with upholstery like this
Me and my dad were car hunting together, in 1986 or 1987, and it was two.potentials left. This and the toyota camry. The Mitsubishi was far nicer equipped at the same price point, vs a totally stripper camry.
Ours was a 2.0 four, 100 or so hp, 5 speed manual, 0-60 mph in 10.8 seconds. Not slow at all as the article.describes. Extremely comfy, perfect highway cruiser.
Ours was.an upgraded “winner” equipment level, with exrra sound insulation etc. Probably the quietest car i have driven to a this day. Up to.150 kmh, it was VERY quiet.
Not at all impressed by the handling though. Front heavy boat would be the best description. At about 180 000 km, and 10 years, lots of smaller things, and interior bits started falling apart. At the time, I had inherited it from my dad, i sold it for quite a good amount, about 1/4 of new price.
But I agree, the seats were awsume. Only car ive had that would tilt headrests forward to give you an actual headrest on long trips. To me, most headrests are too far back, so essentially unusable.
We did many long cross.country trips.with this vehicle, and it excelled at that. Auto heating control worked great too.
The tested Galant may have been slow at 14.3 0-60.
But you gotta be impressed by the top speed of 163 MPH @ 6000 RPM!
I’m just going to reiterate what I said here 6 years ago today. Every single time an 80’s Mitsubishi product is featured here I get a little misty. This was truly the golden age for them. I mow sometimes carpool with a co-worker who drives a 2014(?) Outlander Sport, and it’s a miserable thing to drive or ride in. There seemed to be so much promise back in the 80’s. Are they still selling like hotcakes in Aussie?
In a word, no. Mitsubishi is just a shadow of its former self. The Magna (wide-body Galant) was their core product, and the last-gen model (by then called 380) never took off here, amid long drawn-out speculation they were going to close up shop. As well as seeming likely to become orphans, they didn’t seem as nice as the previous model. Mitsubishis are all imported now, and (I think) only SUVs. Almost all of their product seems to have been around forever, with ever more awkward styling in an attempt to look new. Really, there seems nothing to recommend them over any other brand any more.
Ex-Mitsubishi fanboi. ;(
They do alright, Pete. Fourth best-selling brand in 2019, and sixth in 2021, with supply-constraint oddities meaning waiting lists well into ’22 for ’21 orders. Even at their peak days of yore they were only ever fourth, with occasional third.
It’s actually this very car (as the widened Magna) that sewed the seed of their long-term demise. I too had one, in manual, and it was superb, luxury-class in ’89, let alone in ’85 at release. But the flaws of reliability were fatal, and universal. I got out before mine bit.
Agree that they’re not much now. Various family members have ones, and the quality is not that of a Toyota. They were bought purely on price and huge warranty, hardly an inspiring thought for a car nut type, but it DOES make them recommendable to the vast majority of normal people. They’re ok-enough, and excuse my yawn.
Oh, one exception: the last big locally-made one, the 380, was an exceptionally nice car, thoroughly underated and utterly reliable. But it isn’t always better late than never in the auto world, I’m afraid.
Looks so much like an Eagle Premier. The 80s Mirage was a Fiesta beater with better build quality ,more expensive but more up.market. Americas cheapest car is the…… Mirage / Space Star .A bumpy and cheaply built car.
Sad.
Their SUVs sell well in NZ despite the aging design Outlanders are popular a mate of mine has the PHEV model and loves it and so far completely problem free, theres a smaller model I cant recall the letters on the back but they are everywhere too, Mitsubishi is alive and well in the south pacific.
My Dad had one of them, it was his wife’s car, and they seemed to like it. Seems like the auto trannys were the weak link and theirs did go a bit short of 100K IIRC, but they liked it well enough they traded it in and got the next generation. They weren’t nearby at the time and I never saw it in person. A coworker at the time had one also, and the tranny went on it too.
I came REALLY close to buying one of these new in 1986; that was the year (and the year or two leading up to my actual purchase) that I test drove more different cars (and different types of cars) than I ever have since (and likely ever will). Part of that was trying them on to see how I actually liked them after driving them versus some ideal image in my head…you can say what you will, that I shouldn’t have had to test drive some of them instead figuring out ahead of time, but for instance I tried several 2 person only cars (a Bertone X1/9 and a Toyota MR2) and found they weren’t for me…probably fine for some, particularly those who own multiple vehicles, but I never have (other than slight overlap when I hadn’t sold my previous car since I didn’t do trade ins).
Anyhow, the Mitsubishi dealer in the city I still live in was pretty new. and they must have been running a sale, since the place was pretty busy (also probably was on a weekend) but I test drove an ’86 Galant, and hadn’t quite decided whether I wanted to buy it…I went home, then back to the dealer…and someone bought it out while I was deciding. They of course had other Galants but I didn’t care for them (one was a loaded Sigma, but it had too many gadgets for my taste, I was pretty particular in what I was looking for.
Anyhow, it probably worked out for the best, though I never got around to owning any Mitsubishi…I had a friend at the time who had not just an early 80’s Plymouth Sappporo, but also an 80’s Dodge Challenger, which were the same car, but different years, made by Mitsubishi, I admired them, but decided back then I was a hatchback person and really every car I bought since then (an ’86 GTi) was exactly that…maybe 5 door instead of 3 door hatch, but really just modern version of what I had. The problem I’m having now is that my 2000 Golf is 22 years old, and though it is fine, and I enjoy driving it, no one else in my family drives manual transmission. I’d buy another Golf, but they stopped selling them (sell GTi instead, but I really don’t want one anymore, I had an ’86). They are pushing hatchback owners to crossovers/SUVs, and I really don’t want one of them either…I might end up getting a used car just because they no longer sell new ones which are basically what I have now, just with an automatic now (after 41 years of owning nothing but a manual).
I’m sorry Mitsubishi isn’t doing well…they offered some good alternatives in the past, maybe I should have bought a Lancer hatch when they offered them, but that’s also one of my problems, sometimes they offer a car that would be great for me, but I’m not at the point of looking to buy in the narrow range of time they offer it, and when I’m ready it isn’t available (except as used) anymore.
My dad had a 1985 galant turbo and I loved that car. In The Netherlands the galant was a very common sight. I can still remember how the inside of the door looked like where I used to sit as a kid, the strange but beautiful dashboard and how the engine used to sound like a wistle with the balance shafts. My grandpad had a couple years later a galant gti of the 6th generation. Also a very beautiful car.
Mitsubishi is now just a shadow of its former self but they are hanging on.