Junkyard Find: 1993 Mitsubishi Diamante Station Wagon
1993 wasn’t a great year for the station wagon in the American marketplace; the final Volvo 245 came out that year, minivans and SUVs were kicking hell out of wagon sales as families decided that each child required a thousand pounds and/or 150 cubic feet of gear for any trip, and nobody seemed aware that wagon versions of everything from the Sable to the Camry were available for sale.
It’s easy to forget that the not-so-hot-selling Diamante had an even slower-selling wagon version back then, but I was reminded by the sight of this one in a Northern California wrecking yard.
The 6G72 V6 engine went into an astonishing variety of vehicles during its production run dating back to the Muromachi period, from the Proton Perdana to the Chrysler’s TC By Maserati to the worst car in 24 Hours of LeMons history.
This car made it past 200,000 miles.
It was tough for Mitsubishi and Mazda and the other smaller Japanese marques to compete with Lexus, Infiniti, and Acura when it came to the dollars of American car shoppers considering Japanese luxury machinery, and luxury wagon shoppers tended to gravitate to the German dealerships. How many Diamante wagons are left on the road today?
So many patents!
For some reason, Mitsubishi fired the company that made the brilliant James Bondian Cordia ad a decade earlier and went Full Schmaltz on their home-market Diamante ads.
You’d think that Mitsubishi would have emphasized some of their more futuristic vehicles of the time in their Diamante ads.
The US-market Diamante wagon was built in Australia, where it was sold as the Verada. Great for boat towing in harsh weather!
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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"1993 wasn’t a great year for the station wagon in the American marketplace; the final Volvo 245 came out that year, minivans and SUVs were kicking hell out of wagon sales as families decided that each child required a thousand pounds and/or 150 cubic feet of gear for any trip, and nobody seemed aware that wagon versions of everything from the Sable to the Camry were available for sale." I found in my father's photo collection after he passed away a picture he took of Mom being given the keys to the Blue Goose by the salesman. In his description of the picture; he put a date of January, 1996. I thought he was off a year; since it is '95 Taurus; but that may be right. In which case, I bet that saleman was more than happy to have sold off that lot queen to my parents.
"Please consider." Almost too polite there.