Junkyard Gem: 1983 Mitsubishi Starion

Americans had been buying

Mitsubishis

with

Dodge

or

Plymouth

badging for more than a decade when the first Mitsubishi-badged cars began showing up on these shores. For the 1983 model year, Mitsubishi USA offered the

Cordia

, the

Tredia

, the

Mighty Max

, and the

Starion

; the latter was a futuristic-looking rear-wheel-drive

sports car

that took direct aim at potential buyers of the

Supra

, the 280ZX, the RX-7, and even the

Camaro

. Here’s a rare first-year “narrow-body” Starion in a Denver self-service wrecking yard.

Even though

every

Starion sported a turbocharged engine,

the word TURBO was considered so magical

during this era that no self-respecting car company in 1983 would have refrained from adding at least a couple of TURBO badges. Later Starions (and Conquests) even had TURBO badging

sewn into the seat belts

.

In 1983, the Starion’s 2.6-liter

Astron

packed 145 horsepower, which compared favorably to the optional 175-horse engine in the much heavier 1983 Camaro Z28 (the base Z28 engine made 150hp). The 280ZX cost more and offered 145 horsepower; the 280ZX

Turbo

cost

lots

more but had 180 horses.

This car looks tired but not rusty. The pins stuck into fuel-injection electrical connectors tell a sad story of its final days on the road; a frustrated owner tried to use a multimeter to figure out hard-to-diagnose electrical woes.

Auto-reverse was a high-end audio-system feature in 1983 cars. Mitsubishi made (and still makes) plenty of good consumer electronics, so the sound systems in these cars were considered high-quality stuff for their time.

I

shot this car with a circa-1983 cereal-box-prize film camera

, because it seemed like a good idea.

With music by

Osamu Kitajima

and artwork by

Shuse Nagaoka

(whose work you may know from all those 1970s ELO and Earth, Wind & Fire album covers), the Japanese-market ad for this car reveals its SUPER POTENTIAL.