#TBT: DSM triplets buyers guide | Laser, Eclipse and Talon

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”—Shakespeare

William S. was right: If someone’s miserable enough, they’ll hop into bed with just about anyone. Loneliness has spurred many a rash action. And like the lonely man, in the mid-’80s Chrysler and Mitsubishi were sitting around, moping, waiting for someone—anyone—to knock on their dealership doors.

Chrysler had enjoyed a brief flash of …

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Loved the article, sending to everyone I know who looks at me when I talk about my car and asks, "What's a DSM?".

Hmm, this came up on the new front page.

Hard to believe these cars were ever asking $15k once they rolled off the dealer lots.

Also, i have to say a lot of the statements regarding Chrysler in the opening paragraphs were... a little revisionist here, a little inaccurate there, and a lot exaggerated in other places.

Although, it is interesting to compare the derision pointed toward $1.5 billion in loan GUARANTEES (not loans) in 2003, and the attitude towards the more recent, more direct, and much larger government intervention..

Great article! I wanted to point out, however, that 3000GTs & Stealths were not produced in Illinois. Both were manufactured at Mitsubishi's plant in Nagoya, Japan. They are not technically DSMs.

Excellent artice. Just wanted to comment on the part that says "don’t even bother with a slushbox car".

This was commonly accepted when this article was written. Nowadays however, some of the fastest drag DSM's are running built automatics.

In reply to captainzib :

The partner division of the two companies - Diamond Star Motors.

A " junkyard " near me (15 miles) had one of these out front when I stopped there for a part for my Mustang.  The car was completely hemmed in by wrecked cars but appeared, from what I could see from casual viewing, to be in showroom condition.  Couldn't tell which make or model it was but I think it may have been a Mitsubishi as the body was red but from the " hipline " up is was the trademark semi-gloss black. 

I remember when the Eagle Talon TSI (turbo, twin cam, all wheel drive) went racing in the IMSA Radial Sedan series.  Before all was said and done, IMSA reduced the boost and made them run narrower than stock tires so everyone else could keep up!  They were out running 1st gen BMW M3's!

captainzib said:

Loved the article, sending to everyone I know who looks at me when I talk about my car and asks, "What's a DSM?".

Well, there's a new way to feel old.

This brings back memories. I remember seeing them in dealerships. Unfortunately, my father went with the Plymouth Acclaim, which eventually became my first car. Well, he just needed a reliable car, so I guess that worked out.

Side note: "Laser," "Eclipse" and "Talon" go hard as names for cars.

In reply to Colin Wood :

There are very few vehicles whose names also could've been American Gladiators, but the DSM trio pulled it off. They were a tough group to go up against in powerball. 

I worked at the DSM plant for about two years.  Now it's where Rivians are produced. 
Back when it was new, it was an incredible place with all of the robots scurrying around, moving parts for the line workers here and there, and for other robots also working their parts of the line.
The plant was a real boost to the entire central Illinois economy, as it had workers coming in from all over, some as far as Iowa and Indiana  (they'd rent a room for the week-days and head home for the weekend unless there was mandatory overtime.)

First manual was a 93 Eagle Talon ES.  Going from a 90 Beretta GT auto was night/day.  I loved that little car & racked up about 200K on it.  (Engine blew the day after I paid it off, spent $2k on a replacement by the garage next door, added probably 100K on that one alone.)

Colin Wood said:

Side note: "Laser," "Eclipse" and "Talon" go hard as names for cars.

Especially when you add "Turbo". I mean, "Turbo Laser"? Or "Laser Turbo"? Hell that's two American Gladiators right there!

Sadly I almost never see the 1st Gen DSMs in my area anymore. 2nd Gen is better but certainly not common. Seems like the 1st Gens really dried up by the late 2000s locally.

I very much wanted an Eclipse GSX and shopped around for one. The problem was there just weren't many Mitsu dealerships around to shop.  The GSX level was rare and IIRC  dealerships were only allotted one or two so it was my first experience with the dreaded limited availability mark up or what ever they called it. Also, no test drives were allowed. I bought a Honda CRX Si.

Great cars to drive. Until they broke, and they always broke. Mitsubishi was the exception to the rule that all Japanese cars were reliable. There's a reason you no longer see these...anywhere.

Many years ago, I got a ride in a Talon TSi originally built to run at Pikes Peak. It won its class there and ran in the American Rally series. While not technically street legal, the owner took me for a thrill ride that I remember vividly all these years later. 

All the "DSMs are not reliable" comes from broke dicks doing E36 M3ty mods to them.  Stock - they were damn near bulletproof especially the first generation ones.  Tractor-simple despite having turbos and all wheel drive, really good build quality, and big, chunky, heavy duty parts.  Compared to similar 200 horsepower cars of the era, they were tanks.  

In all my years of DSM ownership, I never had any major sidelining issues.  Never did an alternator, a starter, a water pump, touched the rear end, did any more than brake pads and rotors.  Never had to touch the wheel bearings or axles.  Didn't have any electrical gremlins, all the power options just worked.  No weirdness at all, really.  Change oil, decent fuel, timing belt every 60k, maybe recap the ECU since those had those bad electrolytic caps of a lot of things of that era, and you had yourself a real nice little car.  

Turn the wick up, then you break stuff.  

In reply to 93gsxturbo :

This.  1000x this.  They were the first "tooner" car to be monkeyed with by a generation with access to cheap modifications.  Stock, they were very reliable and a blast.  Most people bought bigger turbos with no fuel mods and if they did do fuel mods, no tuning.  They never ran right and most had Uncle Rodney knocking at the door or an access window in the block.

Had an acquaintance in Charlotte back in the mid-2000's who would buy heavily modified DSMs that didn't run right - "just needs a tune" - and returned them to stock everything.  Magically they ran excellent again.  Sold off the "go fast parts" and made a nice amount of money re-selling a good stock car that the next person could modify and start the process all over again with. 

The warcry of a DSM'er is "leave it stock" but none of them ever mean that.  They all heavily modify them. 

I think leaving them stock is way too conservative, and leaving a whole lot of performance on the table. Stock they are way detuned and under stressed, well below what Mitsubishi intended. See some of the Japanese market Galant VR4's that were available. I think the sweet spot for these cars was around 300hp. Above that, tuning and driver empathy become more important. Same for handling. Stock they weren't great. They rode high, and the suspension was soft. Tires and good alignment made a huge difference. Slightly lower and stiffer with good shocks transformed the handling. I think that was a large part of the appeal of the cars- they were really easy to get substantial improvements out of with minimal money and work. The hard part was knowing when to say when. 

They did need more maintenance than your average Toyota- anything made of rubber had a shorter life in that engine bay. Hoses and seals were maintenance items. But they really didn't have many catastrophic failures that weren't mechanic or driver induced. Though it didn't help that a large number of dealer mechanics didn't do the timing belts correctly, leading to the perception of them all having timing belt problems. I've never seen a T-belt failure on a car that had it done properly. 
 

I've put hundreds of thousands of miles on DSM's. I've used them for 100+ mile a day commutes. I once drove my Talon to a track day at Buttonwillow, took it drag racing, and drove it through a blizzard to go skiing at Lake Tahoe in the same week. My 2G GSX needed next to nothing. I never considered them unreliable. 

Well, I observed many a DSM awd turbo coupe in both rallying and street use (my good friend had two different ones). Failures aplenty:  clutches, transmissions, timing chain issues, head gaskets...the list goes on. Sure, some of it was from harsh use (rallying) while others were instigated by enhanced boost levels. But, other cars of the era with 'boost snails' did not suffer the same extensive and catastrophic failures that these cars seemed to. They did seem to be bought by people who treated them like Camaros (redline bang shifts), and the manufacturer failed to recognize that would be likely. Some of it can be written off to unsympathetic owners.

But, having dealt with any number of other MitsuE36 M3si products, I remain wholly underwhelmed by their durability. 

Hmmm yeah, a 115hp horsepower hot hatch wasn't going to get attention from Mustang guys. But something with comparable horsepower at the time like the turbo DSMs could. Then got treated like they had an NA V8 and stick axle.

In reply to ddavidv :

What time frame are you talking about? I'm talking early 90's to early 2000's. I was very active with our large local DSM group. Dozens of us regularly did track days, auto crosses, went to the drag strip. I also did some rally cross. Never saw a car on a trailer, we drove hundreds of miles to the track, and back. There were very few failures, and those were pretty much always  driver or mechanic induced. I got to watch the "evolution" of these cars. At the time, most people had mild to moderately modded versions, built around the stock turbo or a 16G. Is was the minority that pushed the limits with larger turbos chasing lower 60' times at the strip that had the majority of the issues. Clutches were definitely a weak point, since it was cheap and easy to add way more power than the stock clutch was designed to handle, especially with the grip of AWD. Stock would hold 250HP fine, but you wouldn't get a lot of drag strip launches out of it. I think one of the problems was that most people chose the wrong replacement clutches. They went with an overly aggressive choice that would handle way more power than they made, because that's what the fast guys were using. It was also more likely to break stuff. Those that used a clutch that was more in between had much better results on milder cars. The suspension setup was also important, stock or poorly set up would lead to wheel hop. My Talon had launch control and no lift to shift, and I drove the crap out of that thing without breaking anything. Part of the "problem" was that they were so tolerant of bad tunes that owners didn't often realize how off they were until they pushed them too hard. I did see a couple (fairly heavily modded) fail when owners took them on highway top speed runs, exposing the bad tunes. 
 

Later when the cars were dirt cheap and high horsepower was easily and cheaply attainable, failures skyrocketed. Not really fair to blame Mitsubishi for much of the above. 

Big boost plus all-wheel drive. What could possibly go wrong? 

Still, been a minute since seeing one at a local autocross.