Yahoo Autos Junkyard Gem: 1994 Mitsubishi Diamante ES Sedan
Once the decade of the 1990s got rolling, the Lexus LS400, Toyota Cressida, Infiniti Q45, Acura Legend and Mazda 929 had proven that big Japanese-made luxury sedans could rack up respectable sales in the United States. Mitsubishi dove into that competition starting with the 1992 model year, when the Diamante arrived on our shores. Here's one of those early Diamantes, found in an Oklahoma City car graveyard recently.
Mitsubishi had been selling big, swanky Debonairs at home since the middle 1960s, but that car was never sold new in North America (though a Debonair-related Hyundai, the XG300/XG350, did show up here).
The Diamante was based on an enlarged Galant/Sigma platform and was available here as a pillared hardtop four-door sedan (in which there is a narrow B pillar but the door windows are frameless) and as a station wagon. The US-market sedan was built in Japan, while the wagon came from Australia.
The Diamante's price tag made it tempting for American buyers considering Japanese luxury sedans. The base ES sedan listed for $25,525 in 1994, which comes to about $53,097 in 2023 dollars. Meanwhile, the Mazda 929 started at $30,500 ($63,446 now), the Acura Legend sedan cost $33,800 ($70,311 now), the Infiniti Q45 listed at $49,450 ($102,866 now) and the Lexus LS400 was $51,200 ($106,507 now).
The higher-zoot Diamante LS (which cost $32,500 in 1994) got a twin-cam 6G72 V6 driving the front wheels with 202 horsepower, but today's Junkyard Gem is a base ES and it has the SOHC 6G72 with just 175 horses.
Mitsubishi built Diamantes with manual transmissions, but we didn't get those cars on our side of the Pacific. A four-speed automatic transmission was mandatory equipment in North American Diamantes.
This car didn't quite make it to 140,000 miles during its career.