Mitsubishi Starion
Mitsubishi Starion
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Mitsubishi Starion

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Mitsubishi Starion

The Mitsubishi Starion is a sports car which was manufactured and marketed by Mitsubishi from 1982 until 1989 — with badge engineered variants marketed in North America as the Conquest, under the Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth brands. It is a two-door coupé with a fastback design and seating for four passengers. The Starion's straight-four engine is mounted in the front and drives the rear wheels, with some models being turbocharged.

The Starion was one of the first modern Japanese turbocharged performance automobiles with electronic fuel injection.

Mitsubishi began marketing the Starion in 1982, during a period in which a number of Japanese grand tourer (GT) sports cars were available, including the Nissan Z cars, Mazda RX-7, Toyota Supra and to a lesser extent, the Honda Prelude, Isuzu Piazza and Subaru XT.

The Starion was marketed in the US as the Mitsubishi Starion and badge engineered variants of it were marketed as the Dodge, Plymouth and Chrysler Conquest. In the UK it was sold as the Colt Starion.

It was manufactured in two body configurations, a narrowbody and widebody; the narrower style complied with Japanese exterior dimension regulations taxing larger vehicles and engine displacement exceeding two liters. Only the narrowbody was offered through the 1985.5 model year.

The introduction of the widebody also split the car into two ranges: a non-intercooled lower-horsepower car using the narrow body style and a high-performance intercooled widebody. In most markets, widebody cars were given the label of Starion ESI-R or Conquest TSi. Markets that never received the widebody had the ESI-R label, these cars had similar performance as the widebodies. Widebody cars were offered in 1986–1989 model years in the US.

The Starion was featured in the 1984 movie Cannonball Run II, with Jackie Chan at the wheel.

Mitsubishi says "Starion" is a contraction of "Star of Arion" — and refers to both a star and the mythical horse, Arion. The cover of the original Japanese Starion sales brochure, published by Mitsubishi (May 1982) carried the text: "the name STARION — derived from the combination of star and Arion, Hercules' horse in Greek mythology, symbolizes a sense of the universe, and of power and high performance."

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