Junkyard Find: 1984 Mitsubishi Starion LE
Many of us laugh at the Starion now, but it was considered genuinely badass by me and my high-school peers back in 1983 or 1984. It looked fast and mean and had the magical-in-the-1980s word “TURBO” on every possible surface.
Of course, it was also a flaky, breakdown-prone money pit, but it took a few years for that to become clear to everyone. Still, Starions show up in self-service wrecking yards to this day. Here’s a battered ’84 that I saw in the San Francisco Bay Area a while back.
It’s not enough to have TURBO badges on the outside of the car. You need TURBO seatbelts as well! If ever a car screamed for the legendary 2″ screen black-and-white in-dash TV, it was the Starion.
Mitsubishi was all about the futuristic technology back then. Thermostat-based HVAC systems were found in hyper-expensive Mercedes-Benzes and the occasional Detroit luxury car (where this feature didn’t work so well).
The 2.6 liter Astron four-cylinder engine went in many Mitsubishi and Chrysler machines during the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, you could get a Chrysler K-car with this engine and “Hemi 2.6” badges.
Wailing guitars, turbo whoosh, a magical princess, and Super Potential!
In New Jersey, the Starion was advertised with scenes from “Cannonball Run II”, and the “turbo seats” get a mention.
Mitsubishi brings The Turbo Age down to earth!
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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I wanted one when they came out when I was a young buck. Msrp around $17k as I recall, so, not cheap. Back then, all Japanese cars were assumed to be excellent, and if anything, Mitsu was considered more cutting edge than other Japanese cars.
Ah, the miserable 2.555L Mitsubishi 4-cylinder! Revered at first, then hated for eternity. They must have shared head gasket technology with their 3.0 V6.