Welcome to another edition of Nostalgic Wednesdays!
If you’ve been keeping up with our Facebook page, I posed the question of what you guys would like to see in our Nostalgic Wednesdays posts, and Nolan Bjorn was the first one to give us some feedback and suggested the Mitsubishi Starion to which, I gladly obliged.
Factory stock, this JDM supercar already looks like it has some serious aero.
Now before we get into it here, it’s important to note that the Mitsubishi Starion had many names, but most people remember the Diamond Star Motors name and the Dodge/Plymouth/Chrysler Conquest version. But people in the know often regard it as the StarQuest. The StarQuest ran a 1983-1989 production run was sold as a strong competition to the then popular Japanese sports cars such as the Nissan 300ZX and Mazda RX-7’s. The StarQuest was actually made by Mitsubishi Motors and sold at various DSM dealerships.
The numbers say it all: The StarQuest was the underrated JDM sports car to have.
The StarQuest in my honest opinion, Mitsubishi’s last great sports car. Now before you jump all over me with cries of EVO EVO EVO, my idea of a true sports car is a two door, RWD chassis, and while no doubt any EVO could stomp the shit out of any Starion, it’s just not the same. Not even the successor to the Starion, the GTO/3000GT/Stealth came back to it’s RWD roots. And let’s be honest, it had all the symptoms of a badass sports car: adjustable suspension, Factory Limited Slip Differential, badass flip up headlights (this WAS the 80’s), massive 16×8, 16×9 (ESI-R) alloys under a super flared out widebody, bucket seats designed by Recaro, and an interior that screams TURBO.
That brings us to the next awesome thing about the StarQuest. It was all about turbos. If there ever was a car to flaunt the fact that it was factory turbocharged, it was the StarQuest. Besides the obvious turbo badging on the exterior of the car, once you sat in the car you were greeted to an all amber lit gauge cluster featuring a prominent turbo boost gauge. The damn seatbelts even had the words Turbo written into them. The later widebody StarQuests came with a Mitsubishi TD05-12A turbo that was mounted to the G54B 2.6L SOHC four cylinder motor, the japanese counterpart came with the stout 4G63 version. Driving the StarQuest with a pretty torquey 2.6L 4-cyl, you can feel the torque definitely down low.
The StarQuest wasn’t without it’s faults however. While the torque felt great for everyday driving, the car would fall flat on it’s face after about 5500 rpms. The flywheel was retarded heavy, and this made for very slow revving, which, if you try to rev-match made it pretty difficult to adjust to. Combine that with a not so great aftermarket support, and it’s tough to find one of these cars still running on the road.
Road Racing...
Drifting… (sort of)
....or drag racing, the StarQuests were very capable chassis.
Why the StarQuests never became as popular as the “other” JDM supercars is beyond me, and I never could figure it out, but the StarQuests are some of my most favorite cars to ever come out of Japan, and even when I catch a glimpse of one online, it always makes me pause to check it out. It’s pretty safe to say that these RWD monsters look incredible with great fitting wheels and stance and don’t need a gaudy body kit to make them look good. Here’s a couple of examples of “nice” looking StarQuests.
Do-Luck Double Sixes: Hot damn.
Before we conclude this episode, here’s a fun fact: back in the 80’s, Mitsubishi sponsored a Japanese cop TV show called Gorilla 8 and it featured among many different types of Mitsu’s, a gullwing (yes, gullwing, as in Back to the Future DeLorean) Starion. There were 5 made and sold, and they actually look good! They were sold for roughly around $50-$60k each and are considered to be super duper ultra rare cars with only 3 accounted for. Check out the cheesy show!
DeLorean, eat your heart out.
Volks on a gullwing Starion. A dime a dozen.
Be sure to chime in with your ideas for future Nostalgic Wednesday posts on our Facebook page!
–David–
David@maydaygarage.com