Here's Why the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 Was a 1990s Icon

This is a 1999 Mitsubishi 3000 GT VR4 and it was one of the coolest cars of the

1990s

, which seems almost unthinkable now considering Mitsubishi is barely hanging on to the North American market for dear life, but this was one of the best. sports cars from the 90s and today I will take you on a tour. I borrowed this 3000 gt from a viewer

here

in Pennsylvania and chose this one because it is the best example of the last year of the model in the best color with that ridiculous one. wing which was only on the 1999 models, back in 1999 this started at just under 45,000 which translates to around 67,000 in today's money, an unthinkable amount of money to pay for a

mitsubishi

today, so which today i will show you what you got when you spent almost 70 thousand dollars on a

mitsubishi

20 years ago first a little history now the 3000 gt came out in the early

1990s

at a time when all the japanese brands had crazy sports cars, t

here

was the mazda rx-7 and the toyota supra the nissan 300 zx honda had the acura nsx and subaru even joined the svx but the 3000 gt was one of the coolest and specifically the vr4 this car had a 320 hp biturbo v6 strength and you could only get the vr4 with six.

Surprisingly, Mitsubishi also sold a convertible version of this car with a retractable hardtop called the Spider. The VR4 Spider started at just under 70,000. In the 1990s, the money translates to just over a hundred thousand dollars. Today, imagine paying a hundred thousand dollars for a Mitsubishi, it sounds crazy, but back then these Japanese sports cars were considered serious cars and were worth a lot of money. Interestingly, the 3000 GT now also had a Chrysler version, like many Mitsubishi models in the 1990s, it was also sold in heavily modified styling. like Dodge Stealth, but the 3000 gt is the one to review, so I'll review it first today.

I will take you on a tour and show you all the quirks and features of the 3000 gt vr4. I'll take it out on the road and drive it and then give it a score from Doug and for more of my thoughts on the 3000 gt click the link below to visit autotrader.com oversteer where I've also compiled a list of some flawless ones Japanese sports cars from the 90s that are currently for sale on autotrader. Now I'm going to start over and you can see that the custom plate says 1999 vr4, the model year is more important than you imagine, the 3000 gt came out. in the early 90's and competed with all those japanese sports cars during the 90's but by 99 they had all been canceled the supra the 300 zx the svx had all disappeared years before only the 3000 gt joined the 99 along with the acura nsx , which was in a different league, now the interesting thing is that 1999 is the rarest model year for this car.

Mitsubishi sold only 287 vr4s in the US in 99 and this is one of only 287. Stranger than that is the fact that Mitsubishi made some amazing updates to the car for 99 even though they were doing so few that they changed some of the styling and they added the wing. All 1999 vr4s have this crazy looking wing, it looks like some kind of weird aftermarket wing but in fact Mitsubishi installed this wing on all 1999 vr4s and only the 1999 vr4s did they go to the trouble of making this Huge wing for only 287 vehicles now, due to the ridiculous wing and low production numbers, I strongly suspect it will be the 1999 models that will gain dramatically in value one day and apparently so did the original selling dealer.

This is the original window sticker from when Dennis Mitsubishi sold this car new in Columbus, Ohio. You can see the MSRP is 45669 but Dennis Mitsubishi added a 5000 market adjustment. To this car he raised the price to almost 51000 which is almost 80000 in today's money if you wanted a 99 you had to pay the adjustment from the market another interesting thing about the window sticker if you look at the top of the window sticker it says on it, mitsubishi wake up and drive, that was their brilliant slogan back then, then we moved on to just getting into the 3000 gt, obviously There is a key, but there is also remote keyless entry, although the remote is absolutely ridiculous, it doesn't have the Mitsubishi logo on it.

It's separate from the key and looks like the kind of thing you'd get from an aftermarket Viper car alarm system in the 1990s. It's also worth noting that the lock, unlock and panic buttons are placed directly next to each other. side by side and it's the same size, so you have to look at it before unlocking or locking the car to know which button you're pressing now. I thought it was an aftermarket keyless entry remote but here is a picture of this exact remote in the original brochure and They are promoting it as a selling point but I guess it was better than just unlocking the car with a real key.

Once you've unlocked it, you open the doors and then move on to the door panels. Ah yes, the door panels. There are a couple of interesting things on the door panel, so I'll start with this. Now, on modern sports cars, you have carbon fiber trim on the door panels and this thing, there's this piece that sticks out and it's covered with random plush leather for some reason, but just this little piece, there's no Nothing on the rest of the door panel that would ever blow off today, but it's interesting to see they were doing it less than 20 years ago.

Also interesting is the window that rolls down automatically, like in your car you push the window and it rolls down automatically. The strange thing is that when you push it, the power window switch stays pressed until the window goes all the way down and only then does it go back up. I have made fun of this. the mazda rx-7 the mitsubishi eclipse apparently this was pretty common on 90's japanese cars the other interesting thing about the door panel is the color now apparently you can choose two different interiors black or tan on this car this one has the interior tan but all the dashboards were black, so if you have a tan interior, you have tan seats, you have a tan carpet and then a tan door panel, but the dashboard is black, so when the door panel and the dash come together, flow into each other, but They are completely different colors, obviously this would never work today, they would find some way to mix the two colors or if you had a tan interior you would just get a tan dash, but apparently Mitsubishi I didn't want to make any tan boards again.

In the 90s, we next move inside and there are a lot of strange things here. Let's start with the driver's seat, it's electric, there's a little switch on the side, you move it back, forward, up, down, that's pretty normal. There is also a power seat switch on the center console that controls the lumbar support and lower backrest, but only for the driver's seat, so you have some of the controls there and some of the controls on this switch that is actually on the passenger side of the center console. and I'm not done with the weirdness on the driver's seat yet, perhaps the strangest thing is that there is a small latch to the left of the driver's seat marked as memory when you have the backrest in the position you want, pull that latch and then It will remember it and what that means is that when you pull the backrest forward to put someone in the back seat and then push the backrest back, it remembers what position you had it in and returns to that position.

I've seen memory seats before. in many cars, but I have never before seen a car where the memory system was a latch, it is very interesting and surprisingly useful and speaking of unusual controls, now we move on to the steering wheel, you will notice that the steering wheel has five or six buttons, but These buttons are not located in the normal area like where your thumbs would be, but rather they are at the bottom center of the steering wheel, these are the controls for your radio, so if you are driving and want to change the volume of the stereo, you simply move the hand all the way down and press the volume and then move it up again on the steering wheel.

It's a very strange placement, but that's what they did now, since those buttons on the steering wheel are audio controls. You may be wondering where exactly the cruise controls are as they are usually buttons on the steering wheel and that's a great question as it turns out that turning the cruise control on and off activates a small switch located in front of the gear shift lever. on the center console, which is a very strange place for the cruise control, you make the rest of the cruise control settings in a small space that comes off the steering wheel, which is a little more standard, when you want to turn it off, you put it back in hand on the center console and flip the switch and speaking of that cruise control switch right above it is the radio which looks pretty standard and is actually pretty standard, nothing particularly unusual here except that on the recorder it says mitsubishi engines and it has pretty standard mitsubishi logo but It also says FM Diversity and then under the metal of the car I have no idea what that means and I'm pretty sure Mitsubishi doesn't either, above the stereo we have the climate controls and the climate controls on This car has several unusual aspects, the most unusual. and by far the most annoying thing is that every time you press something on the climate controls, they beep, you want to turn them on, you want to turn them off, you hear, hear how annoying this is.

I also like the fact that the climate controls include a screen, this little screen shows where the air comes out and the temperature, and you can adjust where the air comes out and it shows little lines coming out of the dash towards the seat with each adjustment, it's a kind of Mitsubishi. 1990s version of a modern touch screen. The other interesting thing about climate controls is the way you change the temperature. It's a little dial, turn it clockwise for warm, counterclockwise for cool and if you want it to be automatic you press it like a stereo volume and power knob which is actually kind of intuitive, it's a good idea but back to the unusual controls, now we need to move on to the electric sunroof, this was a major selling point, it's mentioned in the brochure on the window sticker which they are really proud of. its electric sunroof, but how do you open it?

You look over the mirror and the ceiling light area, there is no control for it. Well, it turns out the power sunroof control is behind the sunroof, so if you're sitting in the front seats you have to tidy up. of reach behind you, the power moonroof control is much more accessible for people sitting in the back seat, which is unusual and speaking of unusual location, now we need to talk about the cupholders, this car has cupholders, which is pretty good for a 90's model car, the strange thing is that they are in the center console so if you want to use them you open the center console, put your cup in and then you can't close it again so you have to choose between a armrest or cup holder.

Next, we move on to the mats. I love these mats. They stay at them, 3000 gt, of course, but then they say twin turbo, they don't say 3000 gt vr4, which is the name of the model. They say twin turbo to remind you how cool it is. Your engine is a really strange detail. I don't know why mitsubishi did it that way, but I love that they did something I don't like so much: sun visors. When you open them, they look pretty standard, except the visor mirror opens strangely, the cover opens towards your face, so if you are sitting in the driver's seat and want to look at yourself, you completely block your field of vision. .

Next, we move on to the glove box and the owner's manual. I always love looking at the owner's manuals for these old cars, perhaps the most interesting thing about this one is that if you open the new owner's guide, turn to the last page and you will see a business card from good old Joel Newman, the salesman of Dennis Mitsubishi who sold. this car to the first owner in ohio now the interesting thing about dennis mitsubishi is that they were not just a mitsubishi dealer it was dennis mitsubishi pontiac isuzu and hyundai if you had asked me in 1999 which of those brands would survive let me just tell you I wouldn't have said hyundai, but anyway, moving on to the owner's manual, there are a couple of interesting things in the owner's manual starting on page 95.

Open that page and you will see that there is an entire section of the owner's manual dedicated to it. For a pleasant drive, I mean, it says for a pleasant drive and it's like a chapter in the owner's manual and it teaches you how to use your radio and your climate controls to make your driving more pleasant. One of the most interesting things comes on page 102. Look. In this diagram, this motorcyclist is causing inconvenience to the driver of this car. He is not making driving the car very pleasant. Apparently, he is telling her that loud noises can interfere with his FM radio transmitter, which of course interferes with his driving pleasure. then we must discuss it on page 142.

It providesa list of items you should never clean your car with some of these paint thinners that make sense for example you might see someone if you spill paint on your car you might try to throw paint thinner in there to get it. I take it off and it would be bad to scrub the paint off some of those make sense the one that doesn't make sense says never clean your car with gasoline thanks for the advice mitsubishi I really appreciate it can you imagine the mitsubishi lawyer saying? We have to tell him that we had a complaint last week, Jim, we have to tell him that you never clean your car with gasoline.

Do you remember the guy he complained about? He said we didn't tell him and then he cleaned his car with gasoline and that's in the owner's manual. Now, another interesting switch on this car is the rear wiper control. This car is ultimately a hatchback, so it has a rear wiper and is a bit unusual to turn it on. There is a small switch to the right of the steering wheel. You press it. up to turn on the rear wiper, you push it down to put the rear wiper on intermittent mode, but here's the strange part: spray washer fluid, you press the whole switch so you can push it up or down, or you can take the whole switch and something like that. push it in it is very strange, I have never seen that before, another interesting interior element in this car is the seats, now this is a fast sports car, it is one of the fastest sports cars of the 90s today, a car like that one would have these highly bolstered sport seats instead, this thing has these heavily padded leather seats with this plush leather everywhere with all these ripples to try to look like a high end luxury car, it's not even that bolstered that You won't really find seats. like this in any modern sports car and speaking of the seats, I guess now we need to discuss how to sit in the back seat.

Yes, the 3000 gt has a back seat and getting into it is unusually easy. In fact, you just pull a little lever on the passenger seat and then it moves the backrest forward and the bottom of the seat forward surprisingly quickly and automatically, so there's actually plenty of room for basically anyone to get back here, although it's not necessarily a desirable place to be and I'm in the back. Pull the seat back and as you can see there really isn't much room, but I'm back here anyway. There are a couple of interesting things about the rear seats, one of which is that they are true bucket seats, check them out.

They like to curve all the way down, so when you're sitting on them it really feels like you're sitting on them. The other interesting thing is that they have soft leather, but for some reason mitsubishi has added this strange 90s pattern to the leather to make them look maybe a little more interesting than the normal back seats. Exiting through the back is not the easiest process. You have to reach out and grab that lever, but once you do, you're out and much happier afterwards. cargo area there are a couple of interesting and noteworthy items back here.

To get into the cargo area you can pull a release mechanism located on the driver's floor next to the fuel door or you can just take the key and stick it back here and it opens now, when you open it you'll find that the cargo area This car's cargo space is surprisingly spacious for one of the top Japanese sports cars of the '90s. I bet Joel Newman used this as a big selling point when he was trying to sell this for five grand plus the sticker anyway. You can see there are a couple of interesting things back here.

One is the cargo cover. The cargo cover is in place right now and when the rear hatch is closed it will hide any cargo you have in here, but. You can remove the cargo cover and you can also lower the rear seats and then you have plenty of room to transport TVs and furniture in the back of your 3000 gt. The other interesting thing here is the CD changer. It's over. on the side of the cargo area and it's cloth lined, you'd never know it's there, but when you want to change your CDs, you pull on it and then it presents itself to you, you eject the magazine, you change the CDs, you can.

Put it back in and obviously you can control it from the head unit in the front seats. Then move on to the exterior of the 3000 gt. I want to talk about style. Now, the '90s were generally a time of fairly restrained car styling, especially compared to now, but this. The car was a big exception, one of the most stylish cars of the '90s with its overall look and that giant wing, one of my favorite spelling details, it's down here, you have this kind of giant line that leads to these aerodynamic holes in the side of the car, except When you look at them up close, the holes themselves are awfully small, you can barely stick your finger in them and when you turn around and look at where they end, it's right behind where they start and there are only four little holes to go through. they come out.

I can't imagine this served any real aerodynamic purpose, but it was there to look cool. Another interesting styling element on this car was the wheels, for two reasons number one, they are gigantic and I'm not just saying they're 18 inches. wheels and that was huge back in 1999, no one was even close to 20 inch wheels, putting 18s on a sports car was a big deal and they attracted a lot of attention and if the size of the wheels didn't get your attention then what such? the fact that they are finished in chrome, this was not an option, all 99 vr4's had chrome wheels long after almost everyone else stopped making them, mitsubishi was still making chrome, they really suited my overall look, style and the appearance of this car, another One interesting exterior element is back here, which would be the antenna when you turned on the radio in this car, it did what a lot of 90's cars did, the antenna automatically extended and sort of reached into the sky to better radio reception.

Then we move on to the 3000 gt, I want to talk about headlights now, the early 3000 gt models had pop up headlights like many sports cars of that era, but midway through the 3000 gt model, mitsubishi replaced them with fixed headlights as seen here. Once they realized that pop-ups weren't cool anymore, the next step was to move under the hood. Take a look at the engine. You can see that even though this car isn't that old, there isn't a plastic cover to cover all the cool stuff it can. I really see everything and it's quite interesting to see now, as I mentioned before, this is a twin-turbo V6 with 320 horsepower, but that 320 horsepower is a little controversial, you see in the 90s in Japan, all these Japanese car companies They made all of these. high-performance sports cars and they all came to a gentleman's agreement that they would not say their cars had more than 276 horsepower to avoid a dangerous power surge that could kill people, so in Japan it was sold as mitsubishi. gto practically without modifications of the American model and in Japan it had 276 horsepower, they sold it here.

It's the 3000 gt with the same engine, same transmission, everything except it had 320 horsepower, which gives you a better idea of ​​what it was actually producing in Japan, although they claimed it only had 276 horsepower, most of Japanese high-performance sports cars of this era had similar situations. Another interesting mechanical item on the 3000 gt, this car has rear wheel steering, so it has four wheel steering and when you're driving, it kicks in over 30 miles per hour if you're in a tight turn or something like that. and you go over 30 the rear wheels will turn just a little to give you better cornering, that's a really cool feature and it helped the handling of this car but it didn't help the curb weight.

This car was known even at the time for being incredibly heavy. It has four leather seats. Many features. Electric sliding roof. It has this big twin-turbo V6. engine, all-wheel drive, rear-wheel steering, as a result, this car weighed a little more than 3700, which is simply huge when you consider that it is only a two-door car, it is relatively small and, being from the years 90, it doesn't have much of the modern safety technology that a newer car would have, no side airbags, no blind spot monitor, no infotainment screens, none of that, and yet it still weighed over 3,700 pounds, which was huge in the 90s, as a result this car always had a reputation. of being some kind of fat overweight mitsubishi sports car and finally I want to talk about the brochure now that the owner of this car has the original 3000 gt brochure from 1999.

I love reading these old car brochures from the 90s, they are always ridiculous and this one is no exception. I'm going to start with the cover, there's a picture of the 3000 gt and then right above it there's a picture of a woman laughing, of course she's laughing, she has a 3000 gt and if you had one you'd be laughing like her, I guess that was the theory now, when you open the brochure, you have cool stuff here for the first page, you get this great 90s advertising slogan, have the Joneses keep up with you and there's this couple that's like diving. diving and are using their 3000 gt as a dive car.

I guess the implication is that it's practical as well as sporty on the next page. I think it's absolutely hilarious that the brochure says "look quick." I say that because the base 3000 gt literally did it. just look quick it was a tremendously heavy car and the base model had about 160 horsepower and it was front wheel drive it did 0-60 in like nine seconds and all it did was look fast finally at the bottom is the page which details all the models and it is interesting to see the base the sl which was the mid level model had 222 horsepower and the vr4 you will also see that there were only four colors in 1999 new zealand green pearl caracas glacier red white and solano black this was of course caracas red, which in my opinion was the best color for the 3000 gt, the color of the advertisement, the color to get and those are the peculiarities and characteristics of the 3000 gt, now it's time to bring it out to the road. and drive it well driving the vr4.

I have never driven a 3000 gt. I have to admit, I'm more excited about this than you think. One thing I noticed right away is that there isn't much room for me. I can do it. Put the seat quite far back, but now in terms of headroom, I mean I have it very low, it only goes this low and I could easily hit my head against the roof if I wanted to, it's unusual even though I'm high. It's rare that you find a car that's really restrictive in terms of headroom and this is the ride quality is better than I expected.

This isn't the best path I'm on right now and it's absorbing it better than I thought it wouldn't be great, but it's not that bad. In fact, I'm surprised that the wing is just plain funny. You can see it on camera right there. I can see it in my rearview mirror. Doesn't block. my point of view necessarily, but it feels like I'm driving a shopping cart, it's reasonably quiet in here, it's quite luxurious, the seat feels great, I made fun of them before because they're overstuffed leather, but it actually feels good, um I think the problem is that that doesn't necessarily feel like a sports car okay I'm going to give it some gas here whoa whoa wow yeah it's really fast it's not just a fast car from the 90's it's A really modern, fast car.

Funny though, I'm sure you heard it there, you can't hear anything. 90's cars only the exhaust wasn't that big of a component, they didn't want to make their cars too loud, you can't hear anything when it's revving it, it's really muted and the fact that it's a v6 is almost funny, you go that fast, it's like where's the noise, wow, it really works though. I love the night. I love driving 90's turbo cars because they drive in the stupidest way. It was so non-linear that I was out of breath at 4,000 rpm in third gear. I thought nothing was happening until 5,000 rpm, at which point it looks like it's going to launch into space.

I swear, some of these cars, some of these 90's turbo cars are faster than modern Ferraris from 5000 to 7000 rpm and then you shift it back to slow, slow, slow, fast, fast, the transmission is pretty easy , the clutch is light, not light, like it's annoying, like you can't feel the grip point, but it's light. enough to make it easy to use, it's kind of a perfect medium and changing gears is quite nice, the shifter fits right into the gear, it doesn't feel vague or you know you're like there's a lot of play, that's not true, it feels almost like a Porsche in that sense, and starting it is easy and since the clutch is light, matching the revs is simple, it's easy to do, the accelerator pedal also feels light and easy, handles quite well, steering feelsvery vague in comparison.

For modern cars the steering feels vague, also in the center there is a lot of vagueness, but in the middle of the corner it is felt, I don't know if it is the rear wheel steering or just the power of suggestion, but it feels a lot lighter and more agile. car than I know it is, I know I'm driving a 3,700 pound overweight car, um, but it actually feels like it's on a rail when you turn a corner, it's agile, it's a lot more agile than it should be. Considering its sidewalk shape, it definitely rides better than I expected.

It's more agile than I thought it would be considering its weight and age. In terms of disappointments, I'd say the steering feel isn't as good as a lot of 90's cars. Headroom really isn't great and the exhaust note just doesn't sound like any engine or exhaust, um, but it benefits, it's faster than I thought, it handles better than I thought and the shifter action is better than I thought it would be um, definitely overall a better driving car than I thought if You can stand the fact that you don't hear much and tall people won't be able to fit in, so that's the 1999 Mitsubishi. 3000 GT VR4 Mitsubishi is no longer a cool brand nowadays they sell cheap crossovers to people with bad credit, but in the 1990s were a serious competitor to mazda, nissan and subaru and this car was a force to be reckoned with and now you can see why it's time to give it an excellent score anyway, starting with the weekend categories and the design of the 3000 gt is ok but a little over the top and a little dated and it gets a 6 out of 10. 0 to 60 acceleration is 4.8 seconds and it gets a 6 out of 10. the handling is good, especially for era, but the steering is a little vague and it gets a 6 out of 10.

The fun factor is decent, but it's a little overshadowed by the lack of outside noise and something like the interior of a luxury car. and it gets a 6 out of 10. Finally, there's an interesting factor that they're getting cooler and getting more respect, but they're not exactly ferraris or lamborghinis and they get a 6 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 30. out of 50. The following are the daily categories starting with features, the vr4 is pretty basic. but it has some impressive features like four-wheel steering and gets a three out of ten. Comfort is good, especially with those plush seats, and the suspension is surprisingly not too harsh.

It gets a five out of ten. The quality is fine. The interior is better than me. It was expected, but reliability is a concern. I have heard some problems with these and there are a lot of complex and old parts and it gets a 5 out of 10. In practical terms it has 11.1 cubic feet of cargo space and 4 seats which easily gives it a 4. out of 10. finally there is value and in my opinion these are going to increase, especially the 1999 models, which are rare and very distinctive and earn a 7 out of 10, bringing the total daily score to 24 out of 50.

Add it up and Doug's score is 54 out of 100 and here's how it compares to other Japanese sports cars. It's not as fun as the s2000 or as attractive as the rx-7, but it holds up pretty well as it did 20 years ago. you