Junkyard Find: 1985 Mitsubishi Galant
The first non-Chrysler-badged Mitsubishis arrived in the United States for the 1983 model year, in the form of the Cordia, Tredia, and Starion. They weren’t enormous sellers, but they made the Mitsubishi name a bit more familiar to American car shoppers. For 1985, Mitsubishi USA brought over the fifth-generation Galant, hoping to steal some sales from the extremely popular Honda Accord. Galant sales were not brisk, to put it mildly, and so I found it noteworthy when I spotted this first-year-of-importation Galant in a San Francisco Bay Area wrecking yard.
Mitsubishi was all about futuristic controls during this era, and so the Galant buyer got these space-station-grade HVAC/wiper controls on pods attached to the adjustable steering column.
On the left-hand pod, more controls, including a paddle-style turn-signal switch.
Mitsubishi trimmed the interior in industrial-strength burgundy cloth and hard red plastic, all of which has done a fine job enduring 32 years of California sun.
Most Accords of this era survived more miles than this car (based on my very unscientific junkyard-odometer sampling), but 163,000 miles is good enough for most cars of the middle 1980s.
This car had a 101 horsepower, 2.4-liter straight-four engine. The 1985 Accord had just 86 hp, and you had to deal with a lot of slimy dealership practices — if you could even find one to buy.
Sounds like a good deal!
As always, the Japanese-market ads were better.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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- Daniel J I had read an article several years ago that one of the issues that workers were complaining about with this plant is that 1/3 of the workforce were temporary workers. They didn't have the same benefits as the other 2/3 of the employees. Will this improve this situation or make it worse? Do temporary workers get a vote?I honestly don't care as long as it is not a requirement to work at the plant.
- Kosmo Tragic. Where in the name of all that is holy did anybody get the idea that self-driving cars were a good idea? I get the desire for lane-keeping, and use it myself, occasionally, but I don't even like to look across the car at my passenger while driving, let along relinquish complete control.
- Bof65705611 There’s one of these around the corner from me. It still runs…driven daily, in fact. That fact always surprises me.
- Master Baiter I'm skeptical of any project with government strings attached. I've read that the new CHIPS act which is supposed to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. is so loaded with DEI requirements that companies would rather not even bother trying to set up shop here. Cheaper to keep buying from TSMC.
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Some woman down here in Pueblo, Co, still drives one of these. A rare one indeed, the one she has is yellow and appears to have a factory sunroof. My 95 Galant was far more conservative looking lol. Those tiny square back up lights are funny.
Had a 86. Great car