Here's Why the Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 Was a 1990s Icon

this is a 1999 Mitsubishi 3000gt vr4 and it was one of the coolest cars of the 1990s that seems almost unthinkable now considering that Mitsubishi is barely hanging on to the North American market for dear life but this was one of the ultimate sports cars of the 90s and today I'm gonna take you on a tour of it I've borrowed this 3000 GT from a viewer here in Pennsylvania and I chose this one because it is the ultimate example the final model year in the best color with that ridiculous wing which was only on the 1999 models now back in 1999 this thing started at just under $45,000 which translates to about sixty seven thousand dollars in today's money an unthinkable amount of money to pay for a Mitsubishi today so today I'm going to show you what you got when you spent almost 70 grand on a Mitsubishi 20 years ago first a little history now the 3000 GT came out in the early 1990s at a time when all of the Japanese brands had crazy sports cars there was the Mazda rx-7 the Toyota Supra the Nissan 300zx Honda had the Acura NSX and Subaru even joined in with the SV X but the 3000 GT was one of the coolest and specifically the VR for this car had a 320 horsepower twin-turbo v6 and you could only get the VR 4 with a 6-speed manual amazingly Mitsubishi also sold a convertible version of this car with a retractable hardtop called the Spyder the vr4 Spyder started just under $70,000 in 1990s money which translates to just over $100,000 today imagine paying $100,000 for a Mitsubishi it sounds crazy but back then these Japanese sports cars were considered serious cars and they were worth serious money now interestingly the 3000 GT also had a Chrysler version as a lot of Mitsubishi models did in the 1990s it was also sold with heavily reworked styling as the Dodge Stealth but the 3000 GT is the one to review and so today I'm viewing it first I'm gonna take you on a tour and show you all of the quirks and features of the 3000gt vr4 then I'm gonna get it out on the road and drive it and then I'm gonna give it a dug score and for more of my thoughts on the 3000 GT click the link below to visit autotrader.com slash oversteer where I've also compiled a list of some pristine 1990s Japanese sports cars currently listed for sale on auto trader now I mean it started back and you can see that the personalized license plate reads in 1999 VR for the model year is more important than you might realize the 3000 GT came out in the early 90s and it competed with all those Japanese sports cars throughout the 90s but by 99 they had all been canceled the Supra the 300zx the SPX they had all gone away years earlier only the 3000 GT soldiered on 299 along with the Acura NSX which was sort of in a different league now the interesting thing is 1999 is the rarest model year of this car Mitsubishi sold only 287 VR 4s in the United States and 99 and this is one of the 287 weirder the maddest effect that Mitsubishi made some surprising updates to the car for 99 despite the fact that they were making so few they changed around some styling and they added the wing all of the 1999 VR fours have this crazy-looking wing it looks like some sort of weird aftermarket wing but in fact Mitsubishi installed this wing at all of the 1999 VR fours and only the 1999 VR 4s they went to the trouble of creating this huge wing for just 287 vehicles now because of the ridiculous wing and the low production numbers I strongly suspect it will be the 1999 models that gain dramatically in value someday and so apparently did the original selling dealer this is the original window sticker from when this car was sold new by Dennis Mitsubishi in Columbus Ohio you can see the MSRP is forty five six sixty nine but Dennis Mitsubishi tacked on a five thousand dollar market adjustment to this car pushing the price to almost 51,000 dollars which is nearly eighty thousand dollars in today's money if you wanted a ninety nine you had to pay the market adjustment one other interesting thing about the window sticker if you look at the top of the window sticker it says on it Mitsubishi wake up and drive that was their brilliant slogan back then next we move on to simply getting inside the 3000 GT there's obviously a key but there is also remote keyless entry although the remote is absolutely ridiculous it doesn't have the Mitsubishi logo on it it's detach from the key and it looks like the kind of thing that you'd get from like an aftermarket Viper car alarm system back in the 1990s it's also worth noting the lock/unlock and panic buttons are placed directly next to each other and sized the same so you have to look at it before you unlock or lock the car so you know which button you're pressing now I thought this was an aftermarket keyless entry remote but here is a picture of this exact remote in the original brochure and they're touting it as a selling point then again I guess it was better than simply unlocking the car with an actual key once you've unlocked the car you open the doors and then we move on to the door panels ah yes the door panels there are a couple of interesting things in the door panels I'm gonna start with this thing now in modern sports cars you'd have like carbon fiber trim on the door panels and this thing there's this like piece that sticks out and it's covered with plush leather randomly for some reason but only this little piece not anything on the rest of the door panel that would never fly today but it's interesting to see they were doing that less than 20 years ago also interesting is the auto down windows just like in your car you push the window and it's auto down the weird thing is when you push it the power window switch stays down until the window is rolled all the way down and only then does it pop back up I've made fun of this on the Mazda rx-7 the Mitsubishi Eclipse apparently this was fairly common in 90s Japanese cars the other interesting thing about the door panel is the color now you could choose apparently two different interiors black or tan on this car this one has the tan interior but all the dashboards were black so if you get the tan interior you got tan seats you got a tan carpeting and then a tan door panel but the dashboard is black so when the door panel and the dashboard come together they sort of flow into each other but there are completely different colors obviously this would never fly today they'd find some way to mix the two colors or if you got a tan interior you would just get a tan dashboard but apparently Mitsubishi didn't want to make any tan dashboards back in the 90s next we move into the interior and there is a lot of weirdness in here let's start with the driver seat which is power operated there's a little switch on the side you move it backward forward up down that's pretty normal there's also a power seat switch in the center console and that controls lumbar support and lower back rest support but only for the driver seat so you have some of the controls are there and some of the controls in this switch that's actually on a passenger side of the center console and I'm not done with the weirdness of the driver's seat yet maybe the strangest thing is there is a little latch on the left of the driver's seat marked memory when you have the backrest in the position you wanted in pull that latch and then it will remember and what that means is when you pull the backrest forward to get someone in the rear seat and then you push the backrest back it remembers what position you had it in and it goes back into that position I've seen memory seats before in a lot of cars but I've never before seen a car where the memory system was a latch it's very interesting and surprisingly useful and speaking of unusual controls we now move on to the steering wheel you'll notice the steering wheel has on it five or six buttons but these buttons are not placed in the normal area like where your thumbs would be instead they're in the bottom center of the steering wheel these are your radio controls so if you're driving along and you want to change the stereo volume you just kind of move your hand all the way to the bottom and push volume and then move it back up on the steering wheel it's a very strange placement but that's what they did now since those buttons on the steering wheel are audio controls you might be wondering where exactly the cruise controls are since those are usually buttons on the steering wheel and that is an excellent question as it turns out to turn on and off the cruise control you flip a little switch located in front of the gear lever in the center console which is a very strange place for the cruise control you make the rest of the cruise control adjustments in a little stock coming off the steering wheel which is a little bit more standard when you want to go to turn off you reach back into the center console and flip the switch and speaking of that cruise control switch right above that is the radio which looks pretty standard and actually it is pretty standard nothing especially unusual here except on the tape deck it says Mitsubishi Motors and has the Mitsubishi logo pretty standard but it also says FM diversity and then below that auto metal I get no idea what that means and I'm pretty sure that neither does Mitsubishi above the stereo we have the climate controls and the climate controls in this car have several unusual aspects the most unusual and by far the most annoying is that every time you push anything and the climate controls they beep you want to turn them on beep you want to turn them off meep take a listen to just how annoying this is I also like the fact that the climate controls include on them a screen this little screen kind of shows where the air is coming out and the temperature and you could adjust where the air is coming out and it shows little lines coming off the dashboard towards the seat with each adjustment that sort of Mitsubishi Shea's 1990s version of a modern touchscreen the other interesting thing about the climate controls is the way you change the temperature it's a little dial turn it to the right for hot to the left for cold and if you want Auto you push it in just like a stereo volume and power knob that's actually kind of intuitive it's a good idea but back to the unusual controls we must now move on to the power sunroof this was a major selling point it's mentioned in the brochure on the windows sticker they were really proud of their power sunders but how do you open it you look above the mirror and in the dome light area there's no control for it well it turns out the power sunroof control is behind the sunroof so if you're sitting in the front seats you have to sort of reach around back behind you the power sunroof control is a lot more reachable for people sitting in the backseat which is unusual and speaking of unusual placement we must now talk about the cupholders this car has cup holders which is pretty good for a 90s car the weird thing is they're in the center console so if you want to use them you open the center console you put your cup in and then you can't close it again so you have to choose between an armrest or cupholders and next up moving on to the floor mats I love these floor mats they say on them 3000gt of course but then they say twin turbo they don't say 3000gt vr4 which is the model name they say twin turbo to remind you of how cool your engine is that's a really strange detail I don't know why mitsubishi did it that way but I love that they did something I don't love quite as much as the Sun Visor is you open up the Sun visors they look pretty standard except the visor mirror opens oddly the cover for it opens down in your face so if you're sitting in the driver's seat and you want to look at yourself you'll completely block your field of vision next up we move into the glove box and into the owner's manual I always love looking in these old cars owner's manuals maybe the most interesting thing in this one is if you open up the new owner's guide turn to the last page you'll see a business card for good old Joel Numan the salesperson at Dennis Mitsubishi who sold this car to the first owner in Ohio now the interesting thing about Dennis Mitsubishi is they weren't just a Mitsubishi dealer it was Dennis Mitsubishi Pontiac isuzu and Hyundai if you had asked me back in 1999 which of those brands would survive let me just tell you I wouldn't have said to Hyundai but anyway moving on to the owner's manual there are a couple of interesting things in the owners manual starting at page 95 open to that page and you'll see there is an entire section of the owners manual devoted to pleasant driving I mean it it says for Pleasant driving and it's like a chapter in the owner's manual and it teaches you how to use your radio and your climate controls to make your drive more pleasant one of the most interesting things comes on page 102 look at this diagram this motorcyclist is is causing a disturbance to the driver of this car he's not making the cars drive very pleasant apparently it's telling you that loud noises can interfere with your FM radio transmitter which of course gets in the way of your pleasant driving and then we must discuss on page 142 it gives a list of items never to clean your car win some of these makes sense paint thinner for example I could see someone if they spill paint on their car and they may try to dump paint thinner on there to get it off and that would be bad to screw up the paint some of those makes sense the one that doesn't make sense it says never clean your car with gasoline thanks for the tip Mitsubishi I really appreciate that can you imagine the attorney at Mitsubishi who's like we got to tell him we had a complaint last week Jim we got to tell him you'd never clean your car with gasoline you remember the guy he complained he said we didn't tell him and then he cleaned his card gasoline and so that's in the owner's manual now another interesting switch in this car is the control for the rear wiper this car is ultimately a hatchback so it has a rear wiper and it's kind of unusual in order to turn on it's a little switch to the right of the steering wheel you push it up to turn on the rear wiper you push it down to put the rear wiper and intermittent mode but here's the weird part - squirt washer fluid you push the entire switch so you can push it up or down or you can take the whole switch and kind of push it in and sorry on I've never really seen that before another interesting interior Atem in this car is the seats now this is a bath sports cars one of the fastest sports cars in the 90s today a car like that would have these highly bolstered sports seats instead this thing has these overstuffed leather seats with this plush leather throughout with all these ripples in it to try to look like a really high-end luxury car it's not even really all that tightly bolstered you won't really find seats like this in any modern sports car and speaking of the seats I guess we must now discuss getting in the back seat yes the 3000 GT has a back seat and getting into it is unusually easy actually you just pull a little lever on the passenger seat and then it moves the backrest forward and the seat bottom forward surprisingly quickly and automatically then there's actually a lot of room for basically anybody to be able to climb back here although it isn't necessarily a desirable place to be and I'm in the back pull the seat back and as you can see well there's not really a lot of room but nonetheless I'm back here now there are a couple of interesting things about the back seats one of which is they are true bucket seats take a look at them they like curve all the way down so when you're sitting on them it really feels like you're sitting in them the other interesting thing is they have smooth leather but for some reason Mitsubishi has added this weird 1990s pattern to the leather to make them look maybe a little bit more interesting than regular rear seats climbing out in the back it's not the easiest process you have to reach and grab that lever but once you do you're out you're a lot happier next up moving on to the cargo area there are a couple of interesting noteworthy items back here now to get into the cargo area you can either pull a release locator in the driver's floor next to the fuel door release or you can just take the key and stick it in the back here and pops open now when you pop it open you will discover that the cargo area of this car is actually surprisingly roomy for one of the premier Japanese sports cars of the 90s I bet joel newman used this as a big selling point back when he was trying to sell this for five grand over sticker anyway you can see there are a couple of interesting things back here one is the cargo cover the cargo cover is in place right now and when the rear hatch is closed it will hide whatever cargo you have back here but you can remove the cargo cover and also you can put down the your seats and then you have a lot of room you could go around transporting TVs and furniture in the back of your 3000gt the other interesting thing back here is the CD changer it's over on the side of the cargo area and is lined in cloth you would never even know it's there but when you want to change your CDs you sort of tug on it and then it is presented to you you eject the magazine change the CDs you can put it back and obviously you can control it from the head unit in the front seats next moving under the exterior of the 3000gt I want to talk styling now the 90s were generally a time of fairly restrained car styling especially compared to now but this car was a major exception is one of the most over styled nineties cars with its general look in that giant wing one of my favorite styling details is down here you have this sort of giant line leading up to these aerodynamic holes in the side of the car except when that should look closely at the holes themselves are tremendously small you can barely stick your finger in them and where you go and look at where they end up it's right behind where they start and there's just four little holes where they come out I can't imagine this served any real aerodynamic purpose but it was there to certainly look cool the next up another interesting styling element in this car was the wheels for two reasons number one they are gigantic and I'm not just saying that these are 18-inch wheels and that was huge back in 1999 nobody was even close to 20 inch wheels putting eight teens on a sports car it was a big deal and they attracted a lot of attention and if the size of the wheels didn't attract your attention then how about the fact that they are finished in chrome and this wasn't an option all the 99v are fours had chromed wheels long after almost everybody else stopped doing them Mitsubishi was still doing chrome they really went with the overall look at me styling an appearance of this car another interesting exterior item is back here that would be the antenna when you turn on the radio in this car did what a lot of 90s cars did the antenna would automatically extend and sort of reach for the sky for better radio reception next up moving on to the front of the 3000 GT I want to talk headlights now the early 3000 GT models had pop-up headlights like a lot of sports cars from that era but in the middle of the 3000 GTS model run mitsubishi replaced them with fixed headlights like you see here once they realize that pop-ups were no longer mixed up moving under the hood take a look at the engine you can see that even though this car isn't really all that old there's no plastic cover covering up all the cool stuff you can really see everything and it's kind of neat to look at now like I mentioned before this is a twin turbo v6 with 320 horsepower but that 320 horsepower is kind of controversial they say back in the 90s in Japan all these Japanese car companies were making all these PI performance sports cars and they all came to a gentlemen's agreement that they wouldn't say their cars had any more than 276 horsepower in order to prevent some dangerous horsepower escalation that could lead to people getting killed so in Japan this was sold as the Mitsubishi GTO with virtually no modifications from the US model and in Japan it had 276 horsepower then they sold it here is the 3000 GT with the same engine same transmission the same everything except it had 320 horsepower which gives you a better idea of what it was actually making in Japan even though they claimed it had only 276 horsepower most of the Japanese high-performance sports cars of this era had sort of similar situations one other interesting mechanical item in the 3000 GT this car has rear-wheel steering so it has four-wheel steering and when you're driving around it activates at over 30 miles an hour if you're on a tight corner or something and you're going over 30 the rear wheels will steer just a little bit in order to provide you with better cornering now that's a really cool feature and it did help the handling of this car but it didn't help the curb weights this car was known even at the time for being incredibly heavy at us for seats leather a lot of features power sunroof and as this big twin-turbo v6 engine all-wheel drive rear wheel steering as a result this car weighed in and a little over 3,700 pounds which is just massive when you consider it's just a two-door car it's relatively small and being from the 90s it doesn't have a lot of the modern safety tech that a newer car would have it doesn't have side airbags blind spot monitor infotainment screens any of that stuff and yet it's still weighed over 3,700 pounds which was massive in the 90s as a result this car always had a reputation of being kind of an overweight fat Mitsubishi sports car I think finally I want to talk about the brochure now the owner of this car just happens to have the original 1999 3000gt brochure I love going through these old 90s car brochures they're always ridiculous and this one is no exception i'ma start with the cover there's an image of the 3000gt and then right above that there's an image of a woman laughing of course she's laughing she's got a 3000gt and if you had one you would be laughing just like her I guess that was the theory now when you open up the brochure you get some great stuff in here for the first page you get this great 90s ad tagline make the Joneses keep up with you and there's this couple who's like scuba diving and they're using their 3000 GT as a scuba car I guess the implication is that it's practical in addition to sporty on the next page I think it's absolutely hilarious that the brochure says look quick I say that because the base 3000gt the literally did just look quick it was a tremendously heavy car in the base model head right around a hundred and sixty horsepower and it was front wheel drive it did 0-60 in like nine seconds and all it did was look quick finally at the end there's the page that details all of the models and it's kind of interesting to see the base the SL that was the mid-level model had 222 horsepower and the vr4 you'll also see that there were only four colors in 1999 New Zealand green pearl Caracas red glacier white and Solano black this one was of course Caracas red which in my opinion was the best color for the 3000 GT the ad color the color to get and so those are the quirks and features of the 3000 GT now it's time to get it out on the road and drive it alright driving the vr4 I've never driven a 3000 GTI after them that I'm more excited about this than you might think one thing I've noticed right away is there's not that much room for me I can put the seat back pretty far but in terms of headroom I mean I haven't really loved it go only goes this low and I could easily hit my head up against the ceiling if I want its run usual even despite the fact that I'm tall it's unusual that I find a car that's really restrictive in terms of headroom and this one is that the ride quality is better than I was expecting and this isn't the best road that I'm on right now and it's hooking it up better than I thought it would it's not great but it isn't so bad I'm actually surprised by that the wing is just hilarious you can see it in the camera right there I can see it my rear view mirror it doesn't block my view necessarily but it does look like I am driving a shopping cart it's reasonably quiet in here like barely luxurious the seat feels very nice I made fun of them before Gazoo this overstuffed leather but it actually feels good I think the problem is the Hat you know doesn't necessarily really feel like a sports car right I'm gonna give it a little give it a little gas here whoa oh wow yeah it's really actually quick that's not just 90s car quick that is really modern car quick the funny thing there there be I'm sure you heard of there ya hear anything nineties cars just the exhaust wasn't as big of a component they didn't want to make their cars too loud you can't hear anything when it's accelerating it it really is muted and the fact that it's a v6 and that's that's almost hilarious you're going that fast with like where's the noise it goes though it really goes I love not I love driving 90s turbo cars because they go in the stupidest one it was so nonlinear I'm Florida at 4000 rpm third gear I thought nothing happens until 5,000 rpm at which point it feels like it is going to launch into space I swear some of these cars from these 90s turbo cars are quicker than like modern Ferraris from 5,000 to 7,000 rpm and then you shift that in thread back into like slow slow slow fast fast the transmission is actually pretty easy the clutch is light not late like it's annoying like you can't feel the catch point but light enough that it's easy to use it's sort of that perfect medium and shifting gears is actually pretty nice the gear lever slots right into gear it doesn't feel vague or you know you kind of there's a lot of play that's not true it feels almost like a Porsche in that sense and putting it in gear is easy and because the clutch is light rev-matching is a simple thing it's easy to do the accelerator pedal also feels light and easy it handles quite well the steering feels very fake compared to modern cars steering feels fake also the on center there's a lot of vagueness but mid corner it does feel I don't know if it's the rear-wheel steering or simply the power of suggestion but it feels like a lot and lighter and nimbler of a car than I know it is I know I'm driving a 3700 pound overweight porker of a car but actually it kind of feels like it's on a bit of a rail when you go around a corner it's nimble it's much simpler than it should be given its curb weight it definitely drives better than I was expecting it to it's it's nimbler than I thought it would be considering its weight and age in terms of disappointments I would say the steering feel is not great like a lot of nineties cars the Headroom is really not great and the exhaust note you just don't hear any engine or exhaust but benefits it's faster than I thought it would be it handles better than I thought it would be and the gear lever or shifter action is better than I thought it would be indefinitely overall in general is a better driving car than I thought if you can put up with the fact that you don't hear much and you tall people won't be able to fit so that's the 1999 Mitsubishi 3000gt VR for Mitsubishi isn't a cool brand anymore these days they sell cheap crossovers to people with bad credit but back in the 1990's they were a serious competitor to mazda to nissan to subaru and this car was a force to be reckoned with and now you can see why anyway time to give it a dug score starting with the weekend categories in styling the 3000 GT is fine but a bit much and a little outdated it gets a 6 out of 10 acceleration 0 to 60 is 4.8 seconds and it gets us 6 out of 10 handling is good especially for the time but steering is a bit vague and it gets a 6 out of 10 fun factor is decent but it's doled a bit by not much exterior noise and something of a luxury car interior and it gets a 6 out of 10 finally there's cool factor these are getting cooler in there earning more respect but they're not exactly Ferraris or Lamborghinis and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 30 out of 50 next up are the daily categories starting with features the V air 4 is pretty basic but it has some impressive items like four-wheel steering and it gets a 3 out of 10 comfort is good especially with those plush seats and the suspension is surprisingly not very harsh it gets a 5 out of 10 quality is OK the interior is nicer than I expected but reliability is a concern I've heard some issues with these and there are a lot of complex and aging parts and it gets a 5 out of 10 practicality it has 11.1 cubic feet of cargo space and four seats easily giving it a 4 out of 10 finally there's value and in my opinion these are going to go up especially the 1999 models which are rare and very distinctive and it gets a 7 out of 10 bringing the total daily score to 24 out of 50 add it up in the dug score is 54 out of 100 and here's how it stacks up against some other Japanese sports cars it's not as fun as the s2000 or as good-looking as the rx-7 but it holds its own quite well just like it did 20 years ago you [Music]

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 2,531,440

Rating: 4.8354654 out of 5

Keywords: mitsubishi 3000gt vr-4, 3000gt vr-4 review, 3000gt vr4 review, mitsubishi 3000gt vr4, 3000gt vr4, 3000gt vr-4, mitsubishi gto review, mitsubishi gto, mitsubishi 3000gt, mitsubishi 3000gt review, 3000gt review, mitsubishi 3000gt vr4 review, 1999 3000gt vr-4, mitsu 3000gt, mitsu 3000gt vr-4, vr-4, doug demuro, demuro

Id: sogakkimTgc

Length: 27min 38sec (1658 seconds)

Published: Tue May 22 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/ExplosiveMachine]

explaining the hi-fi jargon that sounds weird but isn't, "auto metal" text refers to the type of cassette tape played, there is the normal brown (ferric) tape and then there are metal (chrome and/or cobalt) tapes, and Dolby noise reduction (which is the little logo to the right of "auto metal") works differently depending on which type of tape you play.

So "auto metal" means that it could determine if you put in the normal plebeian brown tape or the classy high quality audio metal tape and adjust the proper bias and equalization to bring you the ultimate late 90's cassette deck experience.

However it also sounds like it automatically detects when you need some heavy metal music blasted through your speakers based on your driving, which is a feature that would be lot more exciting than what "auto metal" actually means.

[u/SolHiemis]

If the date you put in the DeLorean is correct, happy 30th, Doug!

[u/[deleted]]

"Now they sell cheap crossovers to people with bad credit."

Savage AF

[u/nukelauncher95]

Doug, you seriously never have heard of an automatic tape deck or metal tapes? Only the highest end of stereos would play metal tapes. Usually only the flagship units from some brands like Pioneer, Alpine, and Nakamichi could play metal tapes, and they cost thousands of dollars. Auto means that the deck would automatically play side B. The play head was motorized and would flip over. This was a pretty high end feature too. Most stereos required you to eject the tape and flip it yourself. It blows my mind that you never heard of metal tapes. Chrome tapes were upper end, but the bass sometimes sounded a bit tinny. Chrome tapes are wayyyy more common than metal, but metal definitely has better overall sound in my opinion.

Also, this is definitely not the ultimate VR4. Mitsubishi removed the active exhaust in 1994, the electronically controlled suspension in 1995, and the active aerodynamics in 1996. The 1993 VR4 is considered the best one. The 1999 is more rare, but the 1993 is the one to have.

[u/joegekko]

If this isn't just 30 minutes of Doug saying "because it's the coolest looking car ever" then it's pretty much a wasted opportunity.

[u/dyonisos911]

/u/Doug-DeMuro, the "Don't clean your car with gasoline" thing could have some merit, at least if the translation agency did several versions for different countries and got "lost in translation" or if Japan has what I am going to explain.

In Germany we have something called "Reinigungsbenzin" or sometimes "Waschbenzine" which literally translated means "Cleaning-" or "Washing Gasoline". Maybe the Japanese have something of a similar name and the translating entity just used the next best translation for it.

The closest thing I found through a Wiki search would be this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_spirit

[u/20MPH]

Gasoline is a pretty commonly used solvent in some situations. If someone is dumb enough to put paint thinner on the paint than they are dumb enough to use gasoline.

[u/LordTiddlypusch]

I remember when I was a kid(early teens), and my father was a Mitsubushi tech at the time. He was able to bring a VR4 identical to the one you reviewed home for the night once. For the time it was so impressive, and to this day I still remember my dad taking me for a ride on the backroads around our house. We weren't very well off, but that night I totally felt like the coolest kid in town.

[u/MechaAaronBurr]

The real downside of the car was that instead of climate controls, it just shoots huge dicks out of the dash.