QOTD: What's Your Favorite Automotive Outcast?
Yesterday, we featured an edition of Buy/Drive/Burn pitting three excellent Japanese sports cars against one another. All three were prime time, heavy hitters in their segment, and all three are remembered fondly for various reasons by the Internet Car People.
But some people thought there was a fly in the ointment — a big one. Hence today’s question.
It seemed fairly obvious to me that the correct Japanese sports car trio for 1995 was indeed the Toyota Supra, Mazda RX-7, and Nissan 300ZX. “Yes, this is good,” I said to myself. But after the article went live for an hour or so, there was an audible grumble from commenters both at TTAC and on Twitter.
These dissenting voices declared I’d made a fatal flaw in the trio. Said flaw was including the Nissan 300ZX rather than the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 (the cabrio’s already a Rare Ride). The Mitsubishi, they argued, was more a star than the Nissan ever was, and more a competitor to the Toyota and Mazda.
And that’s fine! Here in The American States, people are entitled to their incorrect opinions and feels. It helps us maintain an interesting and colorful discourse about cars. While I can appreciate the looks and general technical prowess of the 3000GT, I can also appreciate that it was vaguely assembled out of chocolate box plastics, and was de-contented consistently throughout its life.
It was also a heavy pig, and front-drive in all versions where it wasn’t all-wheel drive (ie – most of them). The 3000GT also morphed slightly into the equally chunky and FWD Dodge Stealth. A 3000GT was most assuredly the outcast; the oddball choice against the others.
Here’s your chance to get more of these off your chest. What other outcast, afterthought-then-forgot sort of cars do you love? Which ones get you going, even though buyers left them alone when they were new?
[Image: seller]
Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.
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Thanks for the shout-out!! I am in my 2nd 3000GT VR4 Spyder. (Had a 1996 red one like the one picture, the current one is a 95 black one with 66K miles, mint, stock) Plus, I drove an SL Manual for 15 years. Yeah, heavy cars, but even to this day, I'd rather roll with the 3 diamonds than a Mazda RX7 (I just dont feel like rebuilding engines every 3rd oil change as the Mazda fanbois do) They haven't gain stratospheric value as the other 3, because sadly the VR4's never appeared in the Fast & Furious franchise (there was a cut-scene one, with an awful body kit) But had the car appeared in the F&F, people would be paying much higher prices for sure.
I’ll echo my usual cries of “Scion xD!”. Since that’s the only true outcast I’ve ever owned and loved. Otherwise, the mid-00’s Legacy and Suzuki Kizashi (and SX4) fit the bill and haven’t been mentioned.