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As we’ve seen in this series, Coloradans bought plenty of all-wheel-drive-equipped AMC Eagles, VW Quantum Syncros, Audi Quattros, and Toyota All-Tracs during the 1980s. The suits at Mitsubishi Motors saw all those AWD-enhanced car sales in snowy American regions and decided to sell some rally-influenced Galants on our shores. A few decades later, this rare-but-not-valuable Galant GS-X appeared in a Colorado Springs self-service car graveyard.
I see the occasional street-driven Galant VR-4 around Denver, so I always check for examples of those rare turbocharged machines when I hit the local boneyards. No luck on that so far, but I did manage to find the VR-4’s naturally-aspirated sibling.
This was around the time that Toyota managed to sell a handful of Camry All-Tracs in North America, and the Galant GS-X was a cheaper and sportier all-wheel-drive sedan that may have pried a couple of sales away from Toyota salesmen. Of course, Mitsubishi’s viscous-coupling AWD system wasn’t as sophisticated as All-Trac (or Quattro), but it worked well enough in snow or mud.
The engine was a DOHC 4G63 four-cylinder rated at 135 horsepower, and we can assume it now lives on in some hot-rodded Eagle Talon blatting out its mating call on I-25.
I’m sure GS-X buyers could get an automatic transmission if they so chose, but this car had the five-speed manual.
The gauge cluster has the slushbox gear indicator, however, so we may be looking at a car that began its career with two pedals. I think it’s more likely that it had a cluster swap due to bad gauges, though; I put an automatic cluster in my 5-speed Civic a while back, because I couldn’t find a cluster from a manual car in sufficiently nice condition.
With that in mind, this just-over-100k odometer reading should be viewed with some skepticism.
Galant GS-Xs and VR-4s pack a certain amount of historical significance, since they led directly to the creation of the Lancer Evolution, but their real-world monetary value doesn’t come to much. Still, exactly the kind of car I want to find when I’m in the junkyard.
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Does anyone know why, when offered in the 80s and 90s, AWD didn’t sell and now they have a hard time selling a vehicle without AWD?
Is it that 80/90s was 4WD and now it’s seamless AWD?
Was 4/AWD a much more expensive option then?
I suspect it’s the usual trend of markets to supply more things to more people. Someone said something like “the genius of markets is not to supply more stockings to the queen, but to supply stockings to chamber maids.”
Used to be you had to get out and manually lock 4wd hubs. Next was push button locking, then automatic AWD. Stuff gets better and cheaper by “market magic”.
Subaru did a genius marketing job convincing average people in all climates that they needed AWD just to drive in the rain. They played the long game.
And the sheep bought it hook, line, and sinker.
My neighbor’s wife across the street from me has a 2002 Gallant with leather, sunroof, power windows and locks, and I believe a V6. It is silver with gray leather interior and only about 40k miles. Both are retired and he drives his 2018 Cadillac CTS. Their Gallant is garaged and looks showroom new.
The sad part is that if your neighbor bought say a Toyota 4Runner from that era, 40k and 100% pristine, it’ll be worth close to what they paid for it.
A minty Galant? Probably $5k.
Less.
I recall that in the era, a friend’s GF (now spouse) wanted to buy an eclipse. There were three engines on offer, a SOHC, this DOHC, and the turboed version, although the AWD turbo was out of her price and interest range.
I recommended skipping the base engine, and they got this one. She loved the car, and it was reliable for many years. My friend started making money so they upgraded, but it was good to the last. I drove it a few times, and it was a sweet NA four banger.
Later, I got to drive the AWD version with turbo, and was quite impressed….it was truly ahead of its time. Why is Mitsu so inconsistent ? Today, it’s for credit criminals if it even still exists.
I used to think it would be somewhat useful to have the speed ticked off every 10, but looking at that dash I’ve rethought that position. Twenty mile increments are just fine.
Drove by a Mitsubishi Dealership in of all places Newton, NC on Friday.
Lot full of Mitusbishi crossovers.
The off-road pictures w/mountains in the background are cute but no one that buys a FS SUV in that price range in the 21st century wants or needs it for that. The off-road vehicles go inside an enclosed trailer and are towed behind the SUV. As already mentioned above, due to it being a low on power there are much better options than the LC.
I love the interiors in vehicles of this era, especially this one.
The dash design seems so layered and three-dimensional, though simple. By the end of the nineties, interiors became generally flat, generic, and boring. The interior of the next-gen Gallant was indistinguishable from anything else out there.