Mitsubishi Starion

Mitsubishi Starion (1982 to 1990)

One of the first proper Japanese turbo coupes

The Starion landed in 1982 as Mitsubishi's answer to a fair question: what happens if you bolt a turbo to a rear-drive coupe and give it pop-up headlights? It was part of that first wave of Japanese turbo performance cars, lining up against the Toyota Supra, the Nissan 280ZX, the Honda Prelude and Mazda's rotary RX-7. Slippery body for the day, too, with a drag figure quoted around 0.32 that shamed a fair few rivals.

Under the bonnet sat a turbocharged four, which was the whole point. This was the oil-crisis era, so the smart money had moved off big lazy engines and onto small boosted ones. JDM cars ran a 2.0 turbo, the G63B from the "Sirius" family. Export and US cars mostly got the bigger 2.6 turbo, the G54B "Astron", and later cars picked up an intercooler along with those glorious wide-body "box flare" arches (the GSR-VR in Japan, the ESI-R stateside). Power depends heavily on year and market, so treat any single figure with suspicion. The commonly quoted spread runs from about 145 hp up toward 200 hp for the hottest intercooled versions.

Why an American one says Chrysler on it

Here is the bit that trips people up. In North America the Starion was a badge-engineered captive import, sold through Chrysler's dealers as the Chrysler, Dodge and Plymouth Conquest before the lot was tidied up under the Chrysler name for the back half of the run. The reason is not the oil crisis, whatever your uncle told you. Chrysler had held a stake in Mitsubishi since 1971 and had no home-grown sports coupe of its own, so it simply rebadged Mitsubishi's car and sold it as its own. On top of that, the 1981 Voluntary Export Restraints capped Japanese-branded imports into the States, so shifting metal through a Chrysler badge was good business. The oil crisis explains why the engine is a turbo four rather than a lazy V8. The Conquest badge is pure Chrysler-Mitsubishi politics.

The name itself is a bit of a shaggy-dog story. Mitsubishi's official line ties it to the stars and Greek myth, "Star of Orion" by some tellings, the mythical horse Arion by others. There is also a well-worn legend that it was simply "Stallion" gone wrong in translation. I would not bet the house on any of them.

What to check before you hand over the cash

Rust is the first thing. Like any eighties coupe these cars rot at the arches and along the sills, so get underneath and poke about before you fall in love. Next, the turbo four wants a clean bill of health. Ask hard about any overheating history, because a cooked 2.6 is an expensive way to learn a lesson. The early emissions plumbing and Mitsubishi's fiddly jet-valve gear can be a fussy old business too, so a car that idles and runs cleanly is worth paying for.

Then there is the wide-body versus narrow-body question. My honest take is that the wide-body intercooled 2.6, the ESI-R or Conquest TSi, is the cult pick and the one that holds its value. Just know that US Conquest and JDM Starion parts are not always the same, so sourcing bits can turn into a genuine puzzle. A clean, honest intercooled car with paperwork beats a cheap project every time.