The front-engine rear-drive coupe was a Mitsubishi staple for decades until the Starion’s demise in 1989. The three-diamond brand’s incredible Starion sports coupe was short-lived from 1982 to 1989, making a huge impact at the time and fading out in favor of rally-inspired all-wheel-drive machines over the next decade. With four-wheel independent suspension and a large 2.6-litre four-cylinder engine, the car was an instant success on the racetrack. Sales were steady, boosted by engineering a captive import badge called Conquest for Chrysler, Plymouth and Dodge dealerships, but never matched its contemporaries.
The underappreciated Redwood-era sports car is still available for peanuts compared to the Mustangs, Supras, RX-7s and Porsche 944s it compared favorably with in its time. The box-flared veggie design is one of the most exciting to look at today, and the car was extremely technologically advanced compared to its contemporaries, making it a cult classic in 2026. Starians got flowers in their day, but are often left out of current conversations, and that’s a shame.
Sales of the Mitsubishi Starion (and its siblings) reached 20,000 units in the mid-1980s, but fell dramatically to less than 2,000 units in 1989. It was a technological powerhouse, but economic turmoil in the US and Japan’s inflationary bubble economies of the late 1980s meant that the customer base dried up as prices rose. Throughout its life the Starion was more expensive than its competitive set (except Porsche), and its sales numbers were eclipsed by the larger and heavier Nissan 300ZX. Perhaps the biggest problem Starion faced was muddled branding and a lackluster marketing strategy. In a way the car itself was responsible for its downfall, but we’ll get into that in more detail later.
Japanese import limits and the Chrysler effect
Mitsubishi did not really begin to develop its dealership presence in the United States market until 1982, with this model being its flagship model. By 1980 the company was already producing nearly one million cars per year and was on a growth path, so expanding its North American reach was a logical progression. Mitsubishi was already a known quantity in the US as it had a working relationship with Chrysler since the early 1970s. For example, the Mitsubishi Galant was sold in the US as the Dodge Colt.
Following the fuel crisis of the 1970s and the rapid growth of high-quality fuel-efficient Japanese cars, Detroit’s Big Three were in trouble. President Ronald Reagan negotiated a four-year “voluntary export ban” on Japanese vehicles, giving Detroit time to retool while Japanese automakers invested in American manufacturing to avoid the limit. We don’t have time to debate whether the Big Three used the time bought by Reagan to compete appropriately with Japan, but by the mid-1980s, when the agreement ended, Chrysler was importing more than 100,000 badge-engineered Mitsubishi products annually, and the American company had purchased a 15% stake in Mitsu.
Things came to a head on the Starion/Conquest, as Chrysler was not given the level of input into the creation of the car it wanted, and Mitsubishi was forced to compete with itself for market share. The companies formed a joint venture, Diamond Star Motors, with a new plant in Illinois to develop the next generation Mitsubishi sports car. By this point Mitsubishi was in such a strong position that it was considering making a bid to take over Honda.
All-wheel-drive passion
In a somewhat ironic twist, the Starion may itself have been responsible for its downfall, as Mitsubishi had begun using the chassis to experiment with four-wheel-drive sports cars in preparation for racing in the World Rally Group B class in the late 1980s. A conceptual homologation special was unveiled at the 1984 British International Motor Show with a commitment to build 200 identical units. The Japanese brand was dedicated to making its debut in 1987, using the ’85 and ’86 seasons as a shakedown before a full attack. As it would happen, the deaths of Henri Toivonen and co-driver Sergio Cresto in the 1986 Tour de Corse forced the FIA to take action and Group B was canned as a category for the 1987 season, taking Mitsubishi’s rally efforts with it. At least temporarily.
Overcoming technical hurdles in preparation for the Starion Rally event gave Mitsubishi the confidence to move forward with the now-iconic Galant VR-4 and eventually the Lancer Evolution. Experimentation with four-wheel drive led Mitsubishi to focus its attention on sports cars of the future. The shift from rear-wheel drive to front-drive-based passenger cars was well underway at the company, and the economies of scale from using a FWD-based AWD platform for a sports car could make it more profitable. Thus the Starion’s Eclipse successor will be based on the successful Galant rather than a stand-alone rear-driver, offering similar turbocharged four-wheel-drive thrills at a lower price than the proposed Starion Group B homologation special.
Had it not been for the Starion Group B program, the Mitsubishi we know today might have been a completely different entity, for better or worse. There is no telling whether Starion would have been competitive in the series, but the rules changed and the game ended.
