A Brief History Of The Starion
Maximum StarQuest Day keeps on a-rollin' here at Jalopnik with a photo of Bumbeck's prize-winning Starion and a brief history of the StarQuest Twins, parsed from a fairly extensive article on Wikipedia a site where we spend entirely too much time. It's where we learned Thora Birch's mom is a porn star, after all. Conceived by the Minds at Mitsu and launched in 1982, it was followed by the variously Dodge/Chrysler/Plymouth Conquest (what is it with Mopar's obsession with shunting nameplates between marques, anyway?) in 1983.
Available in a somewhat staggering array of variants in markets around the world, the Starion was produced in both widebody and narrowbody styles in its lifetime, as well as turbo and non-turbo versions. Interestingly, one of the basest-of-the-base model (the Japanese GX) didn't feature an independent rear end. Despite some racing success, especially in rallying (where a variant was developed for steroidal Group B class), the Starion never really caught on with the general public and was euthanized in 1990, replaced by the far-more-popular Eclipse and its Chrysler-brands-badged siblings. We're off to go rock out to Hear 'n' Aid's "Stars" now, re-writing the lyrics on the fly in honor of the late but forever beloved Starion...
Mitsubishi Starion [Wikipedia]