End of a Era. Mitsubishi to Stop Production of the Pajero.

[Motu]

That Hyundai (Stella ?) with the Mitsubishi driveline was on a Ford Cortina floorpan. My brother in Canada had some Dodge badged Mitsubishi...A Dodge Arrow which was a Celeste, a Dodge pickup which was an L200, and what he called his Woody, a Magna with the horrible US style plastic woodgrain down the side. The 2 most successful Japanese brands in North America, Honda and Toyota are the ones not to have another car company badges slapped on them....although Lexus is just a rebranded Toyota, and Acura a Honda.

 

[Carmudgeon]

They really never recovered in the US after that 0% with no payments scheme back around 2000. That really hurt them as a lot of people took them up on that offer, drove their cars for the 24 months and then sold them.

The problem wasn't that their buyers drove the cars for a couple years and then sold them.

The problem was that Mitsubishi's offer of no-cost financing was extended to anyone with a pulse, and a lot of them ended in defaults, saddling the company with a load of bad debt.

That was such a great strategy, the mortgage industry took that and ran with it a few years later, with similar results.

When it could afford to, Mitsubishi put clever engineering in its cars -- turbos, 4WS, AWD, active aero, balance shafts, etc. It didn't invent that last concept, but did hold some form of rights to it, with Porsche as one prominent licensee.

 

[Falcon_LS]

The Magna wasn't a Diamante...well, some of them weren't. The first ones to look like a Diamante were based on the Sigma, stretched a bit here and there. The later ones were kinda Magna/Diamante, and all Diamante station wagons were Australian. The mid '90's on Diamante had the double lower arm front suspension, the Aussie Diamante just had McPherson struts, so much less to go wrong. I preferred the Aussie ones. Last Australian Mitsubishi was the 380, their version of what was sold in the US as a Galant I think.

The Gen III, and IV have been in production for over 20 years, generally bullet proof, even the GDI, and are very capable off road. There is an aussie Youtube channel that does very rugged 4x4 tests, putting all the fancy wagons through the tough stuff...one time they showed their photo truck, it was a Pajero, doing everything that was killing the big boys, you just didn't see it. Like Bear Grills, someone is right there with him to get those shots.

You hit the nail in the head, I WAS thinking about the Sigma. In the early 2000s, the Australian Magna was exported to the Mid East to compete with the Australian-built Camry. They were pretty popular, until it was discontinued in 2005. It certainly was, however, a different animal compared to the Sigma built between 1990 - 1995. Not only did the Sigma have the world's first adaptive cruise control, but also electronic stability control. It was quite a head of its time when MMC was quite the innovator.

 

[aquariuscsm]

I loved my Mitsubishi cars. I had a 96 and 98 3000GT. Never a single problem with them.

 

[JustinH]

I would consider getting a newer Mitsubishi SUV.

The price is right, tons of people in South Texas drive them. Lots of Mexican plated cars driving new Mitsu's also.