http://www.mitsubishisucks.com/slave-labor/camps/hanawa/
Read POW Stories, down the page.
LOL Don’t buy Mitsubishi cause they’re crap!
But is it much better then Ford crap?
It’s worse than Ford crap, and this comes from someone who’s been driving Ford crap off and on for the past 35 years, with occasional experiences in Mitsubishis and other Asian attempts to build motor cars as distinct from transport.
Ford crap is good crap, but Mitsubishi crap is just crap crap, but nice rice crap.
Mitsubishi has yet to make anything remotely approaching Ford 302 and 351 c.i. V8’s, let alone the Ford Falcon GTHO Phase III, or the Mustang, or the T Bird. Or the Edsel.
Mitsubishi’s engineering zenith, or nadir in my view, was probably the 2.4 Litre Astron engine with balance shafts, an engineering necessity to dampen the consequeces of trying to build a smooth four cylinder at the limits of the capacity.
Rice burner Lancers are still crap, if you’re over 25, have both testicles fully descended, and think a car is something more than a mobile studio for putting out deafening doof doof music to annoy people three suburbs away, pulsing out hip hop death metal gangsta rap rave noise which makes sense only if you’re on drugs, and have a terminal head injury.
Tow my 4.5m boat with one of those things instead of a proper car and you’ll end up on your roof in the scenery. You’ll also need someone with a proper car to rip the front underbody out of the stupid front wheel drive Lancer trying to pull it up the boat ramp with my boat and trailer behind it. And my boat ain’t big.
At least Henry Ford paid his workers well, while his anti-union thugs were quite gentle compared with Mitsubishi.
Why yes, actually it is. At one time I think they actually have a better overall reliability rating…
In fact, I’ve heard more than once that many of Chrysler’s problems stemmed from using Mitsubishi technology after they collaborated on several models in the 1980s and early 1990s…
Exactly. If you’re going to buy Japanese, at least buy Japanese that’s quality…
And I would think that Chevan and Henry Ford would see eye-to-eye on a lot of things… 
And yes, the Lancers are junk that’s only image stems from their world rally racing branding image which is about the only thing that keeps them afloat. I hardly ever see the economy version of the Lancer here, ever. Not even close to the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, or Mazda 3. Once in a while I see the souped up all-wheel bling bling e-thug driver version, and yes, I suppose they’re okay. But even Subaru buries them here for that sort of demographic (i.e. AWD sports cars for suburban white punks that can’t decide if they want to mimic Asian racers or under-educated urban black male gangsta wannabes). And I’m not even sure if Mitsu still makes a passenger sedan anymore like the Gallant or whatever their upstart to the Accord/Camry was. I doubt they bother…
But that’s about it, rarely do I see any other Mitsubishi on the road, other than possibly their ultra-high end crap SUV, which was buried long ago in Consumer Reports as an accident prone rollover death trap. I have no idea how the newer ones fair in crash tests, but neither do most other people because nobody cares anymore…
On this side of the pond, the only good car that Mitsubishi makes is the Colt, but that’s a “supermini” so is rather smaller than even a small car on the US or Australian market.
Just to put it in perspective, what you Spams call a “compact” we call a “small family car”…
LOL The Accord sold in the US market is actually wider here to fit our fat asses and wider, roomy roads. I don’t think they’ve sold the Colt here for years, maybe a decade at least. The nonracer Lancer is the smallest they go I think.
The big advantage Honda had in producing them here, initially just to assuage the US fears of declining manufacturing and to avoid import duties in the 80s, but now they’re able to release different versions of the same platform. However, with rising gas prices here, more an more people are going with smaller cars and mileage is finally an issue again…
I should also add regarding Ford that at least they were smart enough to go with becoming majority owner of a good Japanese car company, they’ve owned 30% or Mazda for years now…
Subaru cars over here have a reputation for being practically indestructible and never breaking down, and Mazda have a good reputation too.
The post-communist Skoda’s are also decent cars, sharing chassis with Volkswagen and Seat.
The Pacific rim manufacturers make pap cars, but they are very good value if that’s what you’re looking for.
The only true American cars of current manufacture that you see on the roads are the odd Chrysler minivan, the Chrysler hearse (whatever its proper name is, that’s right, the PT sport cruiser) and very occasionally one of the executive Chrysler models. The slight problem you run into here is that our standard petrol is 95 octane, a touch higher than American standard, so the engines are not optimised for our fuel. Oh yes, sometimes you see an import pickup truck which fills our little roads…
Reminds me.
I forgot about the major source of their huge power.
Exhaust tips the size of a 44 gallon drum that threaten to take the front wheels off the ground with the extra weight, just to make a stock 4 cyl shopping trolley sound like an old V8 pulling five grand, or a WRX on steroids.
They make me piss myself laughing when I hear this huge noise approaching and can’t find the source because I figure it should be at least a fully worked 351 Cleveland or big block Chevy with serious Holleys or Edelbrocks and fully tuned headers through a 2 1/2 - 3 inch exhaust system.
Then it turns out to be some crappy little Lancer which sounds like it should do an 11 sec standing quarter mile but would be struggling to do a 15 sec because of all the little dolls glued to the dash and the fluffy dice on the rear view mirror etc etc, not to mention the Disney seat covers and perforated steel pedals and, for people with lots of money, electronic blow off valves which give audio that makes out like it’s got a turbo on it.
Too ricey.
The Evo series are supposed to be quite good, even if they (and the various Subaru Imprezas like them) are most definately not to my taste.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Lancer_Evolution
You’re right.
I was thinking of the bog standard Lancers the boy racers kit out to look and sound like an Evo.
The Japanese make some fine automotive equipment at the top end, the Lexus V8 with six bolt mains being probably the best mass produced V8 ever built. Nothing Ford or GM have made comes close.
Down here the boy racers are into Nissan Skylines and that sort of Japanese car with turbo everything, which go alright. Go bloody hard, actually, but I can’t stand them, or turbos. If you want more air, put a blower on it. I don’t care how efficient turbos are, big chrome blowers look good. They look extra good on dragsters when they blow up, too. You can’t get that skywards burst of flame and frame bending thump with a turbo. They just catch fire. Quite boring to watch. 
In my case, it’s a generational thing. I still think the pinnacle of automotive fun was a big and hugely inefficient V8 running on leaded petrol with carburettors. A current base model Hyundai 4 cyl would drag them off, and brake and handle better, but you can’t get the same sound and and thigh numbing clutch and bicep building gear lever and heaps of oversteer in them. You’ll also survive a crash in the Hyundai that’ll kill you in the old V8. One’s fun, the other’s practical.
I drive what you call crap, 302 in my Cougar, 302 in my Explorer, 5.3 in my F-150 and I have a 460 on my airboat. No problems with any of them. I’ve always owned Fords, they have always been reliable for me. I don’t know about Mitsubishi, never owned one and I don’t plan on owning one. The company I work for made parts for Mitsubishi, they never payed for the product, so we stopped making parts and would not return their tooling till they paid.
It ended up shutting down some plants and going to District Court and they finally paid.
Subarus are fine cars. The funny thing is that while they’ve really come on and have gained market share in the States, especially with the WRX (my friend’s brother sells them) have become an almost boutique car and have priced themselves way up into a completely different, older market. And Subarus also have a little black mark on their reliabilitiy here because their early vintage automatic transmissions tended to go tits up before 100K miles. Even some of today’s Honda’s like the Odyssey have transmission problems as they mend a 255-hp engine to a tranny designed for a car that was under 200-hp. These are problems that I’m guessing are less noticeable in Europe since I’m assuming that most of the cars are still manual transmission (the way it out to be)…
Then of course, you get the “super-tuner” kids that put blowers and all sorts of mods on their engines increasing the horsepower, but don’t know enough to say --upgrade the oil to synthetic. Or that they are shortening the lifespan of certain engine blocks by doing so if they aren’t very careful. You occasionally get to see a Honda Civic EX with ground FXs launch their motors out of the engine compartments as these morons redline their engines but forget that if they don’t change the timing belt by 100K, that the pistons will get sheered off when the belt goes ((((snap)))…
BTW, crap Ford owns Jaguar, the majority share of Mazda, Land Rover, Volvo, and probably one or two more I’ve forgotten…
Must be coincidental that after decades of legendary unreliability, Jags and Land Rovers gradually improved their reputations after Ford got involved.
Nothing wrong with Volvo’s pre-Ford reputation, as long as you like baby poo yellow-brown slab sided things on wheels and steering them from below the dash wearing a giggle hat and brown cardigan with leather elbow patches.
Or, for current people who’d be Volvo drivers but choose to use modern technology to drive urban tanks to preserve their kids at the expense of ours, being 4WD’s ‘because they’re so safe’ (except when they hit something about the same size or bigger, or roll), here’s their typical driver in his appropriate headgear.
The Jaguars and land Rovers of a few decades ago were produced in nationalised factories by workshy communists who would rather have been on strike than doing their jobs…
It’s no wonder they were less than reliable!
Made by people like Peter Sellers in the 1959 film “I’m all right, Jack”?
My favourite from the late seventies or early eighties is a (possibly apocryphal) story about a car produced in Britain, when the British motor industry had pretty much destroyed itself. It had consistent problems with everything once its cars left the factory.
A common problem in a particular model was a rattle around the the back seat / rear wheel arch.
Nobody could solve it.
Until someone worked out that a disaffected worker on the production line, whose job was to weld up that cavity, routinely dropped in bolt or nut or three, before welding it up.
You’ve just described the French cars I can’t buy!
LOL Actually, the French make some nice looking, stylized stuff that are not available here since AMC went under
My father made the mistake of buying a French car once, and once only…
I shall learn from his mistake…
Nicely styled, but when (not if) they break, they are expensive to fix, and they will break again…