One car that has always held a strange fascination for us when it was new was the US-market Mitsubishi Galant Sigma. We vaguely remember seeing these when they were new but they weren’t very common then; today they seem to have completely vanished from existence. It’s a car so obscure that the Wikipedia entry on it is just one paragraph with a major error in it. (it was introduced in 1985, not 1987).
The car was more popular in Australia, where it was built locally, and possibly in Europe, going by the number of words spent on the main Mitsubishi Galant Wikipedia page. However, even there the US-spec model gets only a one-paragraph mention. This time the introductory model year is correct, but then it implies that the car was replaced in 1988 (in fact it was sold in the US until 1990, though the sixth-gen Galant was sold alongside it for the 1989 model year).
In any case, we are stoked to find a contemporary review of the car because we didn’t pay much attention to them at the time, and it’s always fun to see what critics were saying in period. For example, the Mitsubishi press team was apparently still urging journalists to pronounce it Ga-LONN, which coincides with the Japanese spelling ギャラン (with no T sound at the end).
Also surprising was how Mitsubishi was aiming the car at college-educated professionals and hoping to be cross shopped alongside German sports sedans (these demographic wishlists are usually supplied by marketers at press events). That was probably fanciful thinking, because the car was still a transverse-mounted front-wheel-drive car.
The big news in 1988 was the addition of a new 3.0-liter 6G72 V6 good for 142 horsepower. That accelerated the Galant Sigma with a 4-speed automatic from 0-60 in 9.8 seconds, which Motorweek contends was on par with similar sedans of the era. Sadly, the 5-speed manual wasn’t tested.
Mitsubishi apparently sought to bridge the gap between ordinary and sports sedan with piles and piles of tech. This thing had not only an adjustable suspension to electronically set ride height and shock stiffness, but the driver could also tweak the level of power steering assistance! That’s the sharpest of cutting edges in 1988, and the dash reflects that. Just look at the plethora of buttons, which even flows to the unispoke steering wheel. The Galant Sigma had ABS too, the one piece of tech Motorweek did praise.
All of this came with a price, which was about $20,000. For comparison, a top-trim 1988 Honda Accord LXi sedan had an MSRP of $15,419. It didn’t have all the bells and whistles, but was likely a better all-around handler and, in hindsight, would have been more reliable as well.
Motorweek liked the comfortable seats and roomy cabin, but that wasn’t enough to compensate for the shortcomings of the Galant Sigma’s sporting intentions. Perhaps that was the fatal mistake. If Mitsubishi had positioned it as a high-tech luxury cruiser it may have been just fine, perhaps even superb. However, positioning it as a BMW alternative forced reviews to compare it with a better-handling, rear-wheel-drive sports sedan. Oops.
The last Galant Sigma we saw in the wild was probably 15 years ago, at night, on a southern California highway. Its unmistakable computer grid taillights glowed brightly in the distance. Hopefully this mint 38,000-mile example we wrote about in 2012 has survived.
Well, due to the retrospective of Mitsubishi Motors’ years when it was a party of Chrysler (now Stellantis) while Mitsu’s size that time was bigger than its fellow compatriots who were US big three satellites like Isuzu and Mazda – in case if you know and its Ford and Kia – therefore the following are seen below, but its going to be TL:DR anyway.
1987 was a year before the Hyundai Motor Company introduced the “actual” Hyundai Sonata, different from the rebadged version of the Hyundai Stellar – Hyundai’s second car that was also designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, powered by Mitsubishi/Chrysler married with European/British Ford blueprints – which was front-engined and rear-wheel driven (FR), the “actual” Sonata – given by the specifications like being front-wheel driven (FF) similar to the Excel aka Mitsubishi Precis, Pony in Europe and X1 in Japan due to Excel being used by both Lotus (Europe) and Nissan for a trim of the R31 Skyline (Japan) – was based on the Galant Sigma that’s mentioned on this article. As also noted that, like most Hyundai vehicles that time being derived from Mitsubishi tech, all of the Galant Sigma’s blueprints (except for the bodyshell’s designs) were passed to the Sonata when it was promoted as Hyundai’s large offering (behind the Excel/Pony/X1/Precis) until the Elantra went on sale in 1992.
Please take note that the: Galant Sigma in Europe was called as the Mitsubishi Sapporo.
Unlike the Galant, particularly with its later models until it (and the Eclipse sports car sibling) was discontinued in 2012 – the last-generation Galant was neither meant nor sold to right hand-drive markets in fact, the Sonata (aka Hyundai Sonica in Italy until 2010) later became a hit not only in specific markets abroad, mainly in the US and Canada – the latter was made there in Bromont in Quebec until 1993, but also the Sonata eventually became a success in South Korea starting with the Y3 in 1994, whose Galant origins and foreshadowing of Hyundai’s takeover of Kia from the Blue Oval in 1998 are were still evident by its pre-facelift rear end that has similarities to that of the Galant of that time (1993-1998) and FD Mazda RX-7.
The made in Australia looked a little different. It was engineered to be 65mm wider, so it could better compete with bigger Australian made cars. It was very popular, but engine wise it was rubbish. 2.6 litre Astron pushrod engine.
I saw one complete and in what appeared to be (at least cosmetically) very good condition at a South San Diego wrecking yard a year or two ago. I asked if I could buy it, but this yard doesn’t sell whole cars as policy.
SAD!
Nooooooo!
With the VRA lingering and much of Mitsubishi’s quota pledged to Chrysler, this car didn’t have to have a lot of mass appeal – enough niche appeal to sell the quota of this car which was maxxed out for optimum profit-per-unit was enough.