Description
The Starion and Conquest models covered in this book typify an element of the world automotive scene in the early 1980s. Japanese manufacturers, already well on the road to producing world-class cars, were suddenly finding their access to markets blocked by so-called voluntary trade agreements. These were essentially attempts to protect domestic manufacturers in Europe and the USA against the impact of well-made and keenly-priced imports from Japan. In the USA at least, an elegant compromise had been reached. The Chrysler Corporation, which had shown the foresight several years earlier to develop a relationship with Mitsubishi, began to use the Japanese company’s engines in several of its domestic cars and it also began to put its own badges on some of the more desirable Japanese machines. Thus, just over a year after it had been announced as a new model, the Mitsubishi Starion turned up in the USA as a 1984 model bearing the twin names of Dodge Conquest and Plymouth Conquest. In later iterations, it would become a plain Chrysler Conquest. Whether badged as a Mitsubishi, a Dodge, a Plymouth, a Chrysler or (in Britain initially) as a Colt, the car was essentially the same animal. It was a stylish two-door, two-seater fixed-head coupe with a turbocharged four-cylinder engine. The first examples had a 1,997cc type, equipped, like many other Mitsubishi engines of the time, with the Japanese company’s balancer shaft technology which used contra-rotating shafts within the engine to cancel out vibrations from the crankshaft. In the USA, however, the bigger 2,555cc engine was used, not least because it had already been homolgated for other Chrysler models. Most importantly the need for a catalytic converter within the exhaust system would have left the 2-litre engine struggling to deliver adequate performance, so the larger-capacity type was used as a means of compensating. Even so, in emissions-controlled form it gave performance which was not noticeably better than the European-specification 2-litre. The emissions-controlled 2.6-litre engine also replaced the 2-litre type in European models right at the end of the model-run, but by this stage the Starion was old technology and was no longer selling well. It was withdrawn from production in 1990. Yet the car is now remembered fondly, as a muscular coupé from a time when performance was gradually coming back onto the motoring agenda after the fuel scares of the 1970s. Yes, it had its faults, turbo lag being one of them and, some would say, the curious door mounted seat belts being another. But it most certainly had character, as the articles reproduced in this book make clear. Models covered: Starion, Turbo, 2.0 & 2.6, LS, ES, ESI, ESI-R, Stealth & Conquest.
With a total of 136 fully illustrated pages. SB.
