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Scrapyard Gem: 2008 Mitsubishi i

YORK, England — The mainstream EV is still a bit too young to be easy to find in the car graveyards I frequent (though I have documented a few, including Toyota's RAV4-based competitor to the GM EV1), but I remain hopeful that I'll run across a discarded Mitsubishi i-MiEV during my junkyard travels. This might be difficult, since Mitsubishi sold just over 2,000 examples of the short-range electrified kei car in the United States before discontinuing its sale here in 2016. However, I managed to find one of the i-MiEV's gasoline-fueled brethren in a knacker's yard across the Atlantic: a Mitsubishi i. Yes, I traveled to Northern England in January with the primary goal of visiting one of only two American-style self-service scrapyards in Great Britain (that's what they call them over here): the U-Pull-It in York, which is owned by Dallas-based Copart. You'll be seeing many interesting discarded vehicles from that all-too-brief trip, so be sure to check in here regularly. The i (there ought to be an international treaty forbidding the use of a single lower-case letter as the designation for a vehicle model, as well as vehicles with punctuation marks in their names) was built from the 2006 through 2013 model years. Supposedly its name refers to the pronunciation for the Japanese word for "love." In order to meet kei standards in its homeland, it was fitted with a rear-mounted engine displacing just 0.659 liters. It appears that the internal-combustion-powered i was built only in right-hand-drive configuration, so Mitsubishi limited exports to drive-on-the-left places such as Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Kingdom. The MSRP for a new 2008 i in the UK was GBP9,084, or about GBP14,173 after inflation (that's about $17,992 in 2024 dollars). It seems that the i was just too weird-looking and too slow to appeal to many British car shoppers. Today's Junkyard Scrapyard Gem was one of a mere 303 examples of the Mitsubishi i exported to Europe. The i was available only with a four-speed automatic transmission. The engine compartment refused to open, and I grew tired of beating up my frozen fingers trying to force it open in the 29°F chill of North Yorkshire on a January morning Â… so here's the best shot of the turbocharged DOHC three-banger I was able to get.

Junkyard Gem: 1989 Mitsubishi Galant Sedan

The history of the Mitsubishi Galant in North America goes all the way back to the 1971 model year, when Chrysler imported the first-generation Galant and badged it as the Dodge Colt. Later in the 1970s, we got Galant coupes badged as Dodge Challengers and Plymouth Sapporos, and Mitsubishi began selling Galants (now with front-wheel-drive) with the company's own badging starting in the 1985 model year. The sixth-generation Galant arrived here for the 1989 model year, as a stylish and technology-packed competitor to the Taurus, Camry, and Accord, and it made a fair-sized splash in the automotive world. You'd have a tough time finding one of these cars today, but this '89 appeared in a self-service yard in Phoenix a couple of months back and I was there to document it. 159,385 miles is a respectable total for a 1980s car, and this one looks clean enough to indicate that it had conscientious owners for most of its 31-year life. Check out the dual analog trip counters, the sort of cool little feature Mitsubishi did so well during this era. One of this car's owners (probably its final owner) applied glue-on bling to many locations inside the car. A fairly typical Japanese sedan interior for the late 1980s and early 1990s, though a bit flashier than what Toyota and Honda were doing at the time. The base Galant sedan listed at $10,971 in 1989, versus $12,400 for a Ford Taurus L sedan, $12,105 for a base Chevrolet Celebrity sedan, $11,488 for a base Toyota Camry sedan, and $11,770 for a Honda Accord DX sedan. That was a good price for a competent and fuel-efficient sedan with a modicum of sportiness. Power came from a 2.0-liter 4G63 Sirius four-cylinder rated at 102 horsepower. This engine went into a list of vehicles longer than a Mitsubishi HIIB rocket, everything from the Eclipse to the Great Wall Coolbear, and you can buy a brand-new BAW BJ2022 Brave Warrior with 4G63 power to this day. Protected by the Nassau County PBA and Radio Shack. This car must have begun its career in New York, then moved to Arizona. Some Americans still bought midsize sedans with manual transmissions during this era, but their numbers were in steep decline (Ford stopped selling three-pedal Tauruses, other than the SHO after 1988). This car has an automatic, though I have found a bullet-riddled '91 Galant with a 5-speed during my junkyard travels. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Mitsubishi ready to pull Evo's plug

We have all manner of unofficial metrics in the auto industry. No doubt you've heard some of them, like the butt dyno. Another popular measure is the smiles-per-dollar index - how entertaining is a car versus its price. Cars like the Mazda MX-5 Miata, Scion FR-S and Mini Cooper S, for example, score quite highly, while vehicles like the BMW M5 or Audi RS7 are great to drive, but score lower because of their much higher price tags. For a long time, the king of the smiles-per-dollar index was arguably the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X, which blended hair-raising thrills for the price of a well-equipped Ford Fusion Titanium.
Now, it looks like the Evo will need to hand over its title, as this generation of the rally-derived rocket is likely to be Mitsubishi's last - at least for a while. There's been no mention of just when production of the current car will end, so if you're in the market, we'd suggest trying to find a dealer with inventory ASAP. The news comes from the automaker's Japanese mothership, which says the brand will instead focus on utility vehicles and EVs. While there are no direct plans for a successor, an Evo XI as it were, the door remains open for a different kind of beast, according to Mitsubishi.
"Mitsubishi Motors does not have any plans to design a successor with the current concept, as a high-performance four-wheel drive gasoline-powered sedan," said Namie Koketsu, a spokesperson for Mitsubishi, according to Automotive News. "Mitsubishi Motors will explore the possibilities of high-performance models that incorporate electric vehicle technology."