Originally Posted by Douglas Flint of TCC}

We seem to have a disproportionately large number of Mitsubishi products in our area. In the shop today is a 2000 Montero and an ancient Chrysler Le Baron convertible with a Mitsubishi engine. Because they are a small brand, it can be a real pain getting parts and technical information for them.

The late Seventies was when I started to get interested in cars - and coincidently, that was when Mitsubishi started making inroads into the U.S. market. As an auto producer, Mitsubishi has the unenviable position of always showing great potential and innovative engineering that never materializes into spectacular products or sales. Perhaps they arrived too late on the U.S. market to really gain a presence. Long before Mitsubishi sold cars under their own banner they were a "captive import," having a partnership with Chrysler to sell their products through the Chrysler dealer networks.

When the first gas crisis hit in 1973, Chrysler had no fuel-efficient cars in its lineup or much hope that its engineering team could come up with one. Ford had the homegrown Pinto, and GM, to many people's regret, had the Vega. The late Seventies and early Eighties were the heyday of the Chrysler-Mitsubishi alliance.

Uneasy alliance

By far the most popular of these models was the Dodge Colt. Although there were early variants of the Colt, it didn't really amount to anything until the late Seventies when it was re-engineered into a front-wheel-drive platform in the classic econobox shape. With the base engine, which I believe was a 1.4, and a manual transmission, it got impressive mileage - into the 30-mpg range - and was a far better car than either the Pinto or the Vega, which were still rear-wheel-drive cars.

Sometime around 1980 a new feature, the "twin stick," was added. This clever gimmick gave the car two shifters: the standard four-speed manual trans shifter, and right next to it a second shifter to change the final drive ratio for either "power" (around town or heavily loaded) or "economy" (highway cruising, light loads), which pushed it up into mileage that would be impressive by today's standards.

Although the Colt was available in an automatic it wasn't a good fit. The automatics of the time were balky and bulky, with insufficient gearing eating up much of the performance and mileage and giving them an incurable rough idle. Later a kind of mini-minivan was built on the Colt platform called the Colt Vista. It really could have been a breakthrough vehicle but the engine was never quite enough for it. Honda did a similar vehicle off the Civic, and Nissan off the Stanza platform. The timing must have been wrong because none became big sellers.

King of the four-cylinders

Although the Colt econobox was certainly the best seller, Mitsubishi proved four-cylinders did not have to mean low performance. It produced a big four-cylinder, the 2.6 MCA Jet motor with a number of innovations. The single-overhead-cam, eight-valve engine utilized a timing chain drive on the cam instead of a belt, adding much to its reliability. A set of counter-rotating balance shafts called "silent shafts" smoothed out the inherent roughness of a big four-cylinder. The "jet" valves were mini-valves in the head that were timed to inject a burst of air into the combustion chamber prior to the moment of combustion, to better mix the fuel and air for a cleaner more complete fuel burn. The engine was even a sort of hemi design, or at least marketed as such. Placed in a sleek-bodied rear-wheel-drive car called a Plymouth Arrow in 1978 or Fire Arrow with the big engine, it was the zippiest four-cylinder car of its day and was sought after for many years as a potent rally car. A luxury rear-drive platform sold as the Plymouth Sapporo or Dodge Challenger used the same engine.

Mitsubishi also provided Chrysler with a line of Plymouth Arrow pickup trucks, later sold as the Dodge D-50, which was at least as good as any of the other small pickups from its era. The 2.6 engine was also used as the top-of-the-line engine in the Chrysler K-car series and the Dodge Caravans right through 1986, until it was thankfully replaced by a Mitsubishi V-6 in 1987. The 2.6 also found its way into the Mazda pickup truck line and the Isuzu truck line. An engine doesn't get around like this without having some redeeming qualities.

Going solo

In 1982 Mitsubishi finally went solo selling cars under the Mitsubishi banner. Unfortunately they were still operating as a captive import for Chrysler and under the import restrictions of that era, so the 100,000 plus cars sold under the Chrysler banner counted against their total sales, allowing them to only sell a paltry 30,000 under the Mitsubishi name. The primary models were the Cordia and Tredia - rather forgettable. The shinning star was the Starion, which must have traced its lines back to the Fire Arrow of the Seventies. An even sleeker rear-wheel-drive sports car, but a luxury model rather than the bare bones Arrow, it was powered by the venerable 2.6 engine, now turbocharged. It was always a joyful day at the shop when I could test-drive a Starion or its Chrysler sister, the Conquest TSI.

Time passed. Chrysler came out of its near-death experience a better company. Mitsubishi formed an alliance with Hyundai of Korea, whose original cars were entirely Mitsubishi designs (but very poorly produced). A joint Chrysler-Mitsubishi plant was built in the U.S. to end-run the import restrictions (but not the sexual harassment laws, for which the plant became famous). But it produced one of the more remarkable cars of its era.

The rocket-propelled grenade

The Mitsubishi Eclipse series (also sold as Eagle Talon, and the lesser-known Plymouth Laser) was special. The high-end variant sported an ominous bubble in the hood to make room for the cams on the DOHC 2.0-liter engine. Sold in either an all-wheel drive or front-wheel drive variant, this car was an absolute screamer. When you stomped the gas pedal on one of these, the "not under full control" buzzer in your brain went off as all four wheels began spinning simultaneously and you felt a great shove from behind as the turbo began to kick in. Fortunately the handling and the brakes were also good. That was the rocket part. Unfortunately the grenade part was the engine, which threw its timing belt, all too often resulting in bent valves and thousands of dollars of damage.

Changing the timing belt frequently did not help because the system was so poorly designed that even the manufacturer couldn't figure out a good procedure to do it, meaning your timing belt was just as likely to fail after it was changed. A year later the 3000GT was released with a 3.0 DOHC V-6 (with a twin-turbo setup available) sold under the Dodge nameplate as Stealth. With the Galant model becoming a respectable sedan and the Montero as a sport-utility - and even an entry into the luxury sedan market with the Diamante - it seemed Mitsubishi was on its way.

But the Diamante fizzled, the Galant never got better, and the Montero, which started life dramatically overpowered with a 3.0 V-6 in a Suzuki Sidekick-sized vehicle, wound up dramatically underpowered with the same 3.0-liter V-6 in an Explorer-sized vehicle. When sales dropped, somebody got the idea of boosting sales by not actually making the customer pay for the car.

After that fiasco, Daimler sunk a couple billion of its bought-on-the-cheap Chrysler money into Mitsubishi hoping that Mitsubishis would become the platforms for all future Chrysler cars, which didn't happen. Now I see Mitsubishi selling Dodge trucks just as Isuzu, formerly a GM captive import, sells nothing but GM trucks, and Mazda, a Ford affiliate, sells Ford trucks and SUVs.

It's the curse of the captive import. Brought in to fill a hole in a domestics' line, they never really make money on their own. The domestic eventually figures out how to build the cars it was using the captive to provide. Once it can do this it cuts the captive free, but having been a captive, it is unable to stand on its own and must lean on its domestic partner for money just to survive. After a time the domestic will no longer support the captive and the captive winds up selling the domestic products.

In appreciation

But the automotive world is better for Mitsubishi's presence. They provided economical four-cylinders, demonstrated that a powerful four-cylinder engine was possible, pioneered innovations such as the twin stick (which I think could have a future today), the jet valve system, and they used a lot of turbos. Their parts and engines are present in almost every make.

Some generals get to have their victory parade in the enemy's capital city. Others must fight the battle in far-flung fields just to hold the enemy at bay. Perhaps this is Mitsubishi's lot. But try telling that to the shareholders.