A Mitsubishi Starion costs, on average, $14,260.
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The Starion is still produced by Mitsubishi?
From 1982 to 1989, Mitsubishi produced and sold the Mitsubishi Starion, a two-door, turbocharged, four-cylinder, rear-wheel-drive, four-seat hatchback sports vehicle. Conquest-badged variations of the Mitsubishi Starion were sold in North America under the Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth names.
The Starion, which came after the previous Isuzu 117 Coup, was one of the first contemporary Japanese turbocharged performance cars with electronic fuel injection.
A JDM Starion is Mitsubishi?
In the 1980s, one of the top JDM sports cars was the Mitsubishi Starion. Its turbocharged engine and protruding exterior were highly desired. But how useful is having one in the modern era?
During the decade and into the 1990s, performance automobiles were popular. Despite having a large following, these automobiles are surprisingly affordable today and aren’t that difficult to find.
Consider purchasing a Starion for your upcoming Japanese sports car project. Perhaps you have one but don’t really understand it. So let’s fill you in on a few facts about this underappreciated speedster.
What is meant by Starion?
The Nissan Gloria and Cedric sedans are two vehicles that consistently draw the attention of friends and coworkers from other countries. The Gloria made its debut in 1959, and the Cedric followed the following year. Both versions, which were built on the same platform, were discontinued in 2004, but not before they made English speakers throughout the world smile at their dated names that seemed like they belonged in the 19th century. When naming a car in Japan, I firmly believe that the automaker should exhaust all reasonable means to ascertain the proposed name’s cultural connotations before deciding on it. I simply ask my Japanese coworkers to think of the two most traditional names from the 19th century and double them to help them comprehend. Gloria and Cedric are names for grandparents rather than cars.
A name with urban legend status is the Mitsubishi Starion. According to Mitsubishi, the name is an abbreviation for “Constellation of Orion” and alludes to both a star and a legendary horse. The animated head of a horse appears near the end of the original Japanese TV ad for the car from the early 1990s, which you can watch on YouTube. The voiceover there says “Starion,” which is pronounced very similarly to “Stallion.” That’s because R’s and L’s are not distinguished in the Japanese language. For instance, “Larry” and “rally” are written with the same same characters in Japanese. So it turns out that a significant portion of the global automotive sector thinks “Starion is simply a mispronunciation of “Stallion. The name was changed to Conquest for its North American-spec vehicle because it was obviously impossible to use that name in the United States.
What about these two gorgeous Daihatsu vehicles? The 660cc K-car Atrai, which in Japanese is spelled “A-tray,” had an odd name for a microvan. However, if you pronounce it like an English native speaker would”a try, it becomes very relevant to rugby players, especially when parked next to a Mazda Scrum, a little kei-truck from 1989 that is really a Suzuki Every with a different paint job.
What vehicle resembled a Mitsubishi Starion?
Masty provided the image. The Mitsubishi Starion and the Dodge (and later Chrysler / Plymouth) Conquest, which are virtually identical, are the ideal representations of the 1980s.
What kind of engine is in the Chrysler Conquest?
There is little doubt that the Starion is one of the most attractive Japanese sports GT cars of its era; the wide body version in particular appears to be the Porsche 944’s main rival in Japan.
According to Mitsubishi, the name “Starion” is an abbreviation of “Star of Arion” and alludes to both a star and the eponymous mythical Greek horse. The hero Heracles rode the horse into battle during his journey to Elis, and it was claimed to be the progeny of Poseidon and Demeter.
The steel unibody chassis used on the older Mitsubishi Sapporo and the Mitsubishi Galant Lambda was adapted for use on the four-wheeled version of the Starion, which had significantly less miraculous breeding.
Despite the development of a four-wheel drive model, the majority of Starions were rear-wheel drive, with the engine located up front in a longitudinal position and the transmission being either a 5-speed manual or an optional automatic.
Describe the Honda Beat.
The Honda Beat is a mid-engined, rear-wheel-drive, two-seat roadster kei vehicle that was manufactured from May 1991 to February 1996. Soichiro Honda accepted The Beat as his final vehicle before passing away in 1991. About 33,600 automobiles were made in all. Two-thirds of the total production was produced in the first year, after which both production and sales declined sharply. Pininfarina was the creator of the car’s design, and they later offered Honda the concept. The Beat was one of many vehicles created to benefit from the tax-effective kei automobile class in Japan.
Who initiates conquests?
You undoubtedly already know that the Conquest was the name of the Chrysler variant. You might not be aware that the Conquest was marketed under the Chrysler, Plymouth, and Dodge brands.
What does the name “Mitsubishi Starion” mean?
Due to difficulties with Japanese pronunciation, Mitsubishi called a car model incorrectly as “Starion instead of “Stallion.
Since there is no “l in Japanese, it is assumed that it was a classic (and extreme) instance of “Engrish, which is the nearly ubiquitous pronunciation of the English “l as the “r by Japanese. Additionally, Mitsubishi planned to call their newly released fast coup the Stallion because it would be one of their first vehicles to be exported to the US under their own label (Mitsubishis were all branded Plymouth or Dodge up to that point). Furthermore, the term “Stallion” would be a great way to compete with American pony cars like the “Mustang.” There was also the claim that Mitsubishi had used another horse name, Colton, for its well-known brand of sub-compact automobiles.
I declined to buy it. The list of arguments I used to refute it is as follows:
At the time, Mitsubishi was a very sizable firm with operations in numerous nations. Since Chrysler has owned 15% of Mitsubishi since 1971, there have undoubtedly been numerous connections made with the US as well as a significant amount of paperwork, translations, etc. Mitsubishi was not some small-time, backwoods builder. The more educated the Japanese, the more aware they were of these kinds of problems, and therefore employed a large number of translators.
Mitsubishi also has a history of using unusual and heavenly names. Mitsubishi’s first entry into the US market included the Cordia and Tredia in addition to the Starion. Additionally, the names of Mitsubishi’s engine familiesSirius, Astron, Orion, and Saturnall had a cosmic theme. Mitsubishi dismissed the entire argument by claiming that Starion was a combination of Star and Orion. Not a great defense, especially given that the Starion expressly avoided using the Orion engine, yet…
The concluding justification is that someone would have undoubtedly detected this “Early on, before the required badges and other printed items went into production, the error was discovered and corrected. They would have known more about their new American dealer network in advance, right? Or?
Now, the opposing viewpoint:
With the Pajero SUV, Mitsubishi made yet another naming error. Meaning of the awful moniker “In areas of South America, particularly Argentina, a male masturbator/wanker or sexually underdeveloped. Which presumably explains why Montero was used in the US. Or, was that the catalyst?
In their defense, the name Pajero does have a formal Spanish connotation and was originally used for a Japanese prototype ten years before it entered production (carrier of straw). International businesses can run across name issues due to local terminology or dialect. And they typically just go on. It wasn’t as bad as a failed Stallion.
Anyway, Jonny Lieberman and I had a lively discussion about it when TTAC was still around, and he claimed to have heard the following account from a former Toyota (?) engineer:
Not quite so straightforward, according to the tale I heard, the print shop (i.e., third party) responsible for all the marketing materials misheard “Starion and that replacing the badges and owners manuals would be less expensive than having all of the promotional materials printed again.
Well, I didn’t buy it and said the following in response:
Jonny, Large automakers don’t operate that way; they don’t pick up an order from the print shop for all the tooling for several badges and then announce the creation of a new brand! This tale has all the characteristics of an urban legend (ignorance of actual processes). The Tredia, Cordia, and Starion were Mitsubishi’s three models when they began importing straight to the US in 1982. Do you believe Starion is any sillier than the others?
That occurred in the comments section of an article about “Which Urban Myth Is Your Favorite? And now, over four years later, I’m still struggling with the same problem. Well, I was going to skip it and just talk about the car, but about halfway through, I decided to go to Google and see if I could find any old Starion advertisements to include in this piece as is my norm.