Junkyard Find: 1983 Mitsubishi Tredia
I’ve been maintaining an unhealthy obsession the Mitsubishi Cordia for a while now, but what about the hatchback Cordia’s sedan sibling, the Tredia? Very, very few Tredias made it into the United States, and I thought I’d never see one in a wrecking yard… but look at what I just found in California!
Americans had been buying Mitsubishis bearing Dodge and Plymouth badges for a decade before Mitsubishi brought the Tredia, Cordia, and Starion to these shores.
In Japan, Mitsubishi had “Mister Tredia” selling these cars, but that concept didn’t survive the ride across the Pacific.
When this car goes to The Crusher, it will probably lower the total count of American Tredias by 20 percent. I’m hoping that one of the remaining four examples is a Tredia Turbo.
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.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
We had one of these Tredias for a few years. That one had a 136hp 1.8L turbo 4 cylinder engine. It looked quite sporty with the large spoiler in the back. I remember that there was virtually no power till you got the revs up to about 4000rpm then it turned into a rocket. 25 years ago that much power in such a small and light car was impressive. The only other memory I have about it is how fast the body started to rot. It got rusted through in a few years so we had to take it for patching regularly. All in all the long term ownership experience was a nightmare.
I had an '84 Cordia Turbo.. the 1.8L was actually 116HP in the US. It has a version of this dual stick transmission but it was a 5-speed. IIRC 1-4 was actually low range and 5th gear was triggered with switch that was triggered when you shifted into 5th gear and actuated a vacuum actuator which shifted the car into 5th gear. I bought the car used around '90 from a private party and didn't notice that 5th gear was the same as 4th as I hadn't taken car on highway. The seller gave me a factory service manual with car and I found that the fix was simply a burned out fuse. Can you believe it a fuse fixed my 5th gear on a manual gearbox? I thought I saw somewhere that only about 2K Turbo versions were imported a year for the '84-'88 run when Turbo versions were available. The '83 model was carb only. It was throttle body injected with two injectors. Mine used a considerable amount of oil and aside from replacing a clutch the ECU went out. I was able to get an ECU from an '84 Dodge Colt Turbo 1.6L to work in the car before I got rid of it. No intercooler and turbo bearings were oil cooled only so you generally needed to idle it for a few minutes before shutdown or you could coke oil on the turbo bearings.