3000GT MITSUBISHI

THIS EARLY-90s COUPE WAS A TECH TOUR DE FORCE, BUT ALSO A CASE OF ‘NOTHING EXCEEDS LIKE EXCESS’

- NATHAN PONCHARD

IF YOU’RE OF AN age where you remember when the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 was one of the fastest of Japan’s ridiculously high-tech new breed of coupes for the ’90s, then you’ll probably remember one key fact – the Mitsubishi’s weight. Had it been a film and television star snapped holidaying in

France, it would’ve been on the front page of New Idea faster than you could say ‘pass me another cream bun’. But with the benefit of hindsight and from the context of a different era, there’s something deeply wonderful about a two-plus-two as OTT as the 3000GT. After all, it only weighs 1720kg, so how about somebody positivity, people!

Thing was, back in 1990 when the 3000GT effectively showed the door to the already deceased Starion, its bulk was something of an eyebrow-raiser.

Perhaps overcompensating for the rear-drive Starion Turbo’s relative crudeness – certainly in comparison with the sophisticated second-gen RX-7 (1985) and third-gen Supra (1986) – the top-spec 3000GT VR-4 gained just about every piece of technological wizardry anyone could think of in the late-1980s. It became a rolling showcase of what Mitsubishi Motors was capable of, but the price it paid was a weight explosion of more than 450kg.

Mitsubishi didn’t get the memo that fat was out and thin was in – as demonstrated with a deft touch by Japan’s superstars of ’89, the Mazda MX-5 and Honda’s aluminium-panelled NSX. Yet even compared to its direct contemporaries, the far-from-lightweight 300ZX and Supra, the 3000GT VR-4 was 170-220kg worse off at the weigh-in.