1993-1995 Mitsubishi Diamante Wagon

Remember this Australian-built station wagon?

Throw another sushi shrimp on the barbie...?

 

From the Mitsubishi sales brochure.

I was digging through some of my old notebooks and I came across comments from the time I drove one of these rather rare wagons. Let’s just address the elephant in the room; generally speaking, the Diamante was always a nearly-there sort of car. It wasn’t as luxurious as most and it wasn’t particularly sporty to drive. There never was enough power out of the V6 to be truly competitive, the styling wasn’t distinctive enough to capture the public’s interest in a major way and MPG was not great at 16/23.

But compared to something like the contemporary Lincoln Continental, the Diamante sedan (and wagon) was far more impressive to drive. The Mitsu long roof weighed around 3600 pounds and MSRP was in the $23K neighborhood, which was a lot back then. There really wasn’t a competitive model at the time; go lower and the luxury of the D-wagon (that doesn’t sound like a good name, does it; oh well) was lost, while going up-market required quite a few more ducets. For example, you could bop down to your local BMW dealer in 1993 and pick up a 189 hp 525i Touring that weighed 3800 pounds starting at $39K. So, the Australian-built Japanese battle wagon was a pretty reasonable deal in comparison. Sedan-wise, the D-sedan was a direct competitor to cars like the superior Acura Legend, Mazda 929, Toy Cressida or the a-size-too-small Infiniti J30. But none of those were offered at the time in the classic station wagon form.

Luxury, early 90s style. That glossy fake wood...yuck.

Maintenance-wise, the D-wagon and sedan are known for tank-like mechanicals. Sure, rust was an issue but no more than any other vehicle at the time. An acquaintance of mine in Oz owned one for many years, only replacing it when he got tired of the little things that go wrong with any older higher priced car. Supposedly, his mechanic bought it off of him and the car is still running strong. Of course, there’s no salt on the roads there, ever. So, my advice here is to know a friendly mechanic that can properly take care of a car like this or be prepared to do yourself…patiently. A D-wagon will nickel and dime you, but not to death and the rest of the car is solid for a vehicle this age. Parts are still available, though I’m sure small parts like trim are going to be difficult to find NOS. But there are plenty of these in junkyards overseas, so hop on the Interwebz.

America never received many of the options that the rest of the world got, like AWD. But these are excellent cars in the winter with the right set of tires, regardless. The D-wagon was part of the 1990-1995 first generation. Mitsu decided, most likely to pathetic sales numbers, that the wagon that was part of the 1995-2005 second generation would not come here; bummer. According to Wikipedia, the Diamante is significant historically for several technological advancements; the first distance controlled cruise control and integrated active skid and traction control in a mass-produced vehicle. I’m not entirely clear if these items were available or standard in the D-wagon variant.

I'd love to know more about that device in the upper left.

I have no sales figures on the D-wagon, which is a real bummer. I can’t even hazard a guess…1K? 2K? 3 in total? I just don’t know. Whatever it was, it was terrible. And, not surprisingly, there are hardly any left on the market. I believe this was mainly due to unsympathetic owners who probably discarded the car at the first sign of any trouble. This may seem strange given the initial buy-in cost, but it’s likely that the first owners used the car, traded it in and the while the second owners enjoyed the absolutely give-away used car value, they probably didn’t feel any compulsion to do anything other than just dump it when it needed the smallest thing. Another acquaintance of mine at the time dumped a contemporary (and lovely) 929 that had a small squeak in the driver’s door panel. I’m not kidding. People are like that; I’m sure you know several that would make similarly illogical and very costly car purchasing decisions; “The sky is falling!” Regardless, the private party KBB for a 1995 D-wagon is just $1.2K. If you could find a clean one (very difficult) I wouldn’t personally pay any more than $2K for it. Fix the little things that are surely wrong with it and enjoy a very rare “JDM” wagon that you’ll know is really a Mad Max family wagon.

The second gen D-wagon that we didn't get. Plus, a nasty door dent; not standard.

Sadly, Mitsu never deemed it worthwhile to bring in the right-sized Galant wagon.

The neato-bandito Galant wagon. Imagine it in VR-4 trim...cool!

The D-wagon was sold overseas as a luxed-up Magna with a Verada badge. Here it is towing a boat. Imagine the field day American lawyers would have with this!