How Mitsubishi Threw Away a Dynasty

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[Music] keeping the name of mitsubishi on top in turbo technology for australia it's another mitsubishi it's hard to imagine a world where mitsubishi was standing at the top boring crossovers and economy cars mask the once great legacy but there was a time [Music] a time when mitsubishi rose from the ranks as an underdog to stand above the rest a name feared by opponents around the world a technology pioneer full of bold decisions captained by brave men and women pushed beyond its humble beginnings to become a champion and then like an actor who steps away just after a grand performance mitsubishi just stopped leaving us all wondering why why were these humble heroes who created a lineage of industry changing cars stepping away from the limelight this is that story [Music] historically dynasties rarely begin with a strong start it's usually a very slow build every moment a step on the shoulders of those that came before allowing each generation to see further and further you probably know mitsubishi as a little car company that peaked in the 90s but they actually began over 100 years ago and their first innovation came in 1917 with the mitsubishi px33 fittingly japan's very first sedan made with full-time four-wheel drive a 50-year precursor to what made mitsubishi a legend then came the war and japan's bitter defeat by the 1950s japanese companies had formed zaibatsu conglomerates of industries united for a specific cause but the allies ordered the japanese zaibatsu to disband and mitsubishi was forced to switch from war birds like the a6m 0 to safe civilian manufacturing so for those 50 years following the px33 mitsubishi largely made buses trucks scooters and trikes it wasn't until 1960 that the fire at the heart of japan ignited a growing economy and a rise of innovation would fuel the island nation for decades and give birth to legends among them was the evo [Music] but first they needed the help of a few foreigners thanks to the japanese economic boom of the 1960s mitsubishi released their first real passenger car the mitsubishi 500 in 1962 and well of course they took it racing in 62 the homologated 500 super deluxe took on the macau grand prix and dominated the field the win gave the stuffy executives at mitsubishi just enough motivation to seriously enter rally racing with their new cult to test the cult they had australian rally driver doug stewart put the colt through rigorous testing almost immediately stewart was prodding mitsubishi to enter the car in the southern cross rally mitsubishi cautiously agreed they raced two cult 1000 f's in 1967 finishing fourth and third overall it wasn't a victory but mitsubishi's rally hearts started to beat motor rallying is the most demanding of all sports and in australia no event is a greater trial of man and machine than the annual 2 200 mile international southern cross the team continued to race the cult for years never winning but always pretty competitive until 1971 when mitsubishi's new gallant became the weapon of choice in 72 a scottish farmer turned racer named andrew cohen was signed onto mitsubishi's rally team he would later go on to open and run rally art in europe and lead mitsubishi to greatness despite a difficult season the gallant finished a full 24 minutes ahead of its closest competitor the nissan 240z it also beat out the likes of toyota subaru holden and honda and for five years the team went undefeated in 73 they even took the top four spots the lancers are going like rockets small powerful mitsubishi lancers soon emerges the cars to beat 2-3-4 for the mitsubishi team mitsubishi was the dominating force of rally in the 70s and almost by design in 1973 the world rally championship was created mitsubishi themselves didn't enter but a determined man in a mitsubishi did race you're going to sing you won in 1965 one final question uh you know european has never won israeli what do you think is the reason well i think we have been very unlucky so far but uh i keep trying one of these days look i intend to tell the full story of the flying sikh one day he was a modern marvel and it was his absolute fervent dedication to racing that brought mitsubishi to the world stage here's where he comes in jogender singh was an indian man living in kenya by 1971 he'd kind of earned an almost unreal reputation in the african rally scene and in 73 he wanted to compete in the wrc without any backing he bought himself a mitsubishi gallant 16l gs and entered the fray all on his own the following year still determined he bought himself a mitsubishi lancer 1600 gsr this time mitsubishi at least sent him some parts and support in the african sands jogender spent five days piloting the mighty little lancer the least powerful car in the entire safari rally to score mitsubishi's first ever safari victory in 1974 with that the flying seek brought mitsubishi their first win in wrc mitsubishi finally woke up and made sing part of the team they sent other lancers to compete as well he and cohen led the mitsubishi team to a number of victories including a podium lockout in 1976 and then they stopped look mitsubishi isn't exactly the smartest japanese company you kind of always get a sense that they don't really care about cars in general but you're dominating the rally stages and you just stop competing it might have been because they saw the writing on the wall in 1980 audi had the quattro it was clear the age of rear-wheel drive rally cars was nearing its sunset there was an attempt to make a competitive lancer in the early 80s but the best they could do is four minutes behind the quattro it was clear the team needed to restructure re-engineer and most importantly bring a four-wheel drive platform to the table star performer of the new movie cannonball run ii is none other than the mitsubishi starring the sports car that's turbo tuned from its turbocharged fuel-injected engine today rally racing is an oft overlooked sport at least here in the united states but in the early 1980s it had captured the world's eyes and ears and that was largely thanks to group b group b was limitless all-wheel drive and turbos rocketed the sport into formula one levels of excitement an all-out arms race between the world's automotive manufacturers the fastest cars with the highest horsepower piloted by brave men screaming past crowds of even braver spectators mitsubishi knew they needed to be part of group b so they got to work on designing a platform from the ground up they needed to beat audi's cuatro so they followed its formula a nose-heavy turbocharged coupe the platform was asterium their new flagship sports car andrew cohen who was now running rally art in europe was given the lead but to beat audi they needed to bring on allen wilkinson who had helped develop the quattro itself unlike the quattro with its all-wheel drive the steering was actually four wheel drive utilizing the pajero transfer case behind the steering transmission they stripped the sterion down to just the bare essentials and what was left they made out of polycarbonate and carbon fiber the styrian four wheel drive weighed only 2100 pounds yeah about the same weight as a first generation miata the styrian four-wheel drive also received an early version of the now legendary 4g63 putting out a rumored 355 horsepower it was a serious effort by mitsubishi to compete in group b but well it kind of never did development of the stereo four-wheel drive meant delay after delay and by the time they were ready a dark cloud fell on group b in 1986. fatalities in the season were the final nail in the coffin it was able to compete a few times in some prototype races but the styrian four-wheel drive never got its time in the limelight all was not lost though as group a homologation rules came around in the mid 80s mitsubishi had already rung their development team through the paces and now it was their time to shine [Music] in 1987 the gallant vr4 was unleashed upon the world a four-wheel drive sedan with four-wheel steering four cylinders a four g six three four doors yeah that's a lot of fours mitsubishi fielded two factory teams with the gallant vr4 the worx team would take part in the european side of the wrc and the semi works team headed by kenjiro shinozuka who had been driving with mitsubishi since 1971 would compete in the asia pacific rally championship while the rally art team in europe gets a lot of the glory today kenjiro was able to win the aprc championship in 1988 he'd go on to win the car too penalty ginozuka was up to second place for mitsubishi kenjiro even became the first japanese competitor to win a wrc round in the european wrc the rally art team managed meager's successes they won a few rallies in the first year and managed two third place finishes in the manufacturer's championship but it wasn't the results mitsubishi and the rally art team had hoped for and then in 1993 the wrc group a rules changed that meant mitsubishi needed to go back to the drawing board and uh evolve here was the challenge the new rules favored smaller cars and the gallant was a pretty chunky boy at the time so mitsubishi dug into its parts bin and resurrected an old legend the lancer at the time the lancer had faded from glory like many old greats from the 70s it had devolved into just another front-wheel drive economy car hardly the thoroughbred dirt slayer that dominated african rallies of the past to make this humdrum box something special mitsubishi had a ton of work to do first they made the lancer all-wheel drive luckily they had perfected the drive train with the stereo four-wheel drive coupled with a viscous center differential the new lancer would be able to tackle all elements then the team shoehorned in that iconic 4g63t under the hood a rugged workhorse of an engine with twin counter rotating balance shafts and an iron block the 4g63 was capable of near limitless power it was a great start the lancer had definitely evolved but mitsubishi knew it wasn't enough luckily the team still had some wild and crazy ideas there was this guy i mentioned before andrew cohen the man running rally art and in 1993 he was the guy in charge of the lancer evolution program he had this radical idea make the engineers of the car go to the races no more sitting in stuffy offices going over contextless numbers if you force the eggheads to experience defeat while chewing on mud they'll probably be a lot more motivated that constant flow of input from the smart guys with the calculators and the decades of experience with cohen would lead to mitsubishi constantly redesigning the evo seriously the damn thing had six generations in seven years in the same time its celica rival had two generations and the wrx got just one this method absolutely worked when the evo one debuted in the hills above monte carlo all eyes were on two teams toyota with their celica the cheating bastards and ford no one was paying attention to the back of the pack where one of the greatest rivalries of all time was brewing a little car company no one cared about named subaru and an asian king that had long since lost their crown but then you blink and it's 1994. the subaru driven by legend colin mcrae is second in points but the newly minted evo 2 is still playing ketchup in 95 mcrae wins the championship but instead of being in the back the lancer is now nipping at its heels threatening to topple the new king two things happened that year the evo got a new active differential system allowing to dominate when it snowed and they recruited the flying finn known to you and i as tommy machanin a coffee-fueled fiercely patriotic nordic man from finland who had one goal destroy mcrae in 1996 there was another change to the rules cars no longer had to be homologation specials and an unchained lancer evolution 3 was unleashed nine races across the globe would put the rally art lancer and its drivers through the most grueling challenges imaginable mud snow dust so thick it made la smog look safe first came a victory in sweden then victory comes on snow and the other is one on a mixture of death for the first time since the 70s a lancer wins in africa then argentina then finland then australia and that was it with more than half the races won makanon was the champion and mitsubishi was once again the king of rally winning the manufacturer's championship on all five continents they proved that they could still do it that a plucky underfunded little outfit from japan could still win and then keep winning rallying's traditionally been dominated by the finns and 1996 was no exception the world championship decided on the rally australia with one for the first time by tommy mackinnon well done wrc's 96th season saw the debut of evo 4 which was now the last car based on a production vehicle everyone else had already moved on to specialized rally-only cars it didn't matter though makanon his teammate burns and newcomer nidal took mitsubishi to victory once again the only thing that gave the likes of mcrae and ford hope was that machining got the flu and maybe had to sit out turns out if you're an old finnish man though the flu ain't and he won anyway the evo 4 stayed on the scene in 1997 during another wrc overhaul this time there would be an astonishing 14 races and group a was over that meant that a new breed of rally car was emerging with cars that had no production counterparts subaru's impreza rally car lost doors had a radically redesigned body to accommodate suspension that would never work on civilian roads and made an astonishing 350 foot-pounds of torque toyota was able to return since now using non-standard parts was encouraged instead of cheating and brought in all-wheel drive corolla making 300 horsepower the evo 4 however was still a group a car it had 50 less horsepower than the corolla and 100 less torques it didn't matter the newcomers failed to dethrone makanon the evo 5 followed shortly after it was wider to accommodate better suspension like its wrc rivals but still lagged behind in power and weight yet the lancer sat atop the podium once again fifth consecutive time even the evo six wasn't a huge upgrade it had some neat tech like an adjustable wing that they weren't allowed to use but it was still based on a production car however the rules were against them now some people thought it was unfair that mitsubishi was still using group a rules instead of the new wrc rules it sounds like sour grapes to me because the only reason mitsubishi was sticking to those old rules was well they were flat out broke they literally couldn't afford to build a dedicated race program toyota is literally the biggest car manufacturer in the world and they were sitting there whining about how mitsubishi was using a car that was inferior to theirs to kick their ass despite all the drama of course mitsubishi wins again and tommy gets a special edition car named after him which is loosely dubbed the evo 6.5 one of the greatest japanese cars ever built it came from the factory with a list of goodies that could make every boy racer drool titanium turbocharger tuned exhaust programmable ecu suspension that put every subaru ever built to shame and of course rally art inspired graphics so that everybody knew this wasn't just an economy car it was an economy car that you paid a lot of money for unfortunately rule changes a lack of money and a whole host of new manufacturers entering wrc meant that there was a large target painted on the lancer's back after only managing fifth place in the 2000 season rally art and mitsubishi finally gave in and developed an independent rally car detached from the now beloved lancer evolution it never really lived up to the hype the biggest blow came in 2002 to break his seven-year partnership with mitsubishi when makanin went to the blue evil and then graciously bowed out of the sport altogether allowing a new upstart named sebastian loeb to try his hand at racing the mitsubishi rally car continued to improve moving from the back of the pack to the middle of the pack in 2005 but it wasn't enough to ever make it back to the top ever since the 1980s the company itself had been rife with terrible management awful decisions and pr nightmares and in december of 2005 mitsubishi finally announced that it would no longer participate in rally racing when it came time to decide between continuing to race or going bankrupt they chose to focus on making outlanders shortly after rally art itself closed shop after andrew cohen retired there was no one there to replace him and without the backing of a larger corporation there just wasn't enough to keep the lights on mitsubishi would continue to make bad decisions and eventually succumb to the fate of many small companies they got absorbed by one of their biggest rivals in this case nissan who not only assured the end of the lancer rally's dreams but ended the evolution entirely [Music] it's clear that there still exists those inside the sleeping giant that remember when the three rhombe stood atop every podium somewhere inside mitsubishi's sullen halls engineers may still have the will to go faster to defy expectations to build something incredible to prove to themselves and the world that the underdog can still stand atop the pack we don't know if the lancer evo will ever return if a mitsubishi will ever taste the salty sands of australia or plow the snows of sweden ever again but the long forgotten flame of this once great legacy still has a glowing ember beneath the ash that one day may ignite again you
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Channel: THE SQUIDD
Views: 2,024,459
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Keywords: mitsubishi rally history, mitsubishi lancer, lancer evolution history, lancer evo history, lancer evo, ralliart, ralliart return, new mitsubishi lancer evo, new lancer, new lancer evo, wrc lancer evo, lancer evo wrc, mitsubishi wrc, wrc, vintage wrc, world rally cross, world rally, world rally championship, subaru wrx vs lancer evo, tommi makinen, lancer evo VI, group b, group b mitsubishi, starion, starion 4wd, galant vr4, vr-4
Id: NLEHLvxLtxo
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Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)
Published: Thu Aug 11 2022
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