Dodge 2000 GTX? What the heck is that? While GTX is in the name it is completely unrelated to the much earlier and muscular Plymouth GTX. The Dodge 2000 GTX is simply a re-badged Mitsubishi Galant sold only on the Canadian market. Mitsubishi had no official presence in Canada at the time but mother Mopar was willing as always to play musical badging up North.
The sixth generation of the Mitsubishi Galant appeared in 1987 and promptly won the Car of the Year award in Japan. It took until 1989 for the Galant to arrive in North America. Marketed as a sporty alternative the Toyota Camry or Honda Accord the US specification Galant was met with generally positive reviews. Notably the Galant was praised for slick handling while preserving good ride quality and possessing reasonably quick engines. Motor Trend even liked it enough to name the Galant Import Car of the Year.
Lacking any Mitsubishi official presence in Canada the Galant was launched, also in 1989, as the Dodge 2000 GTX. It differed only in badging from its Mitsubishi source. Base, Premium and Premium DOHC were the three trims that were offered at launch time. The 2000 in the name indicated the approximately 2000 cubic centimeters of displacement of its engine. The base and Premium models offered a reasonable 103hp 2.0L SOHC four. Those who stepped up to the DOHC engine were treated to a 135hp 2.0L four cylinder which allowed a relatively rapid 0-60mph time of just 8.2 seconds. This was the same 4g63 engine offered in the more well known Eagle Talon and Plymouth Laser. Unfortunately Canada never received the more powerful turbocharged model that was offered in the United States in 1991 and 1992 so 135hp was as good as it got. The top line car also received active steering and suspension systems. Nineteen ninety saw the availability of all wheel drive which added up to an impressive high tech package for the era.
This particular example is a lower specification car from 1989 or 1990 with some low rent aftermarket wheel covers fitted.
A quick peek inside shows an attractive dashboard layout with high quality materials. It has certainly held up quite well over the years. A five speed manual would have been the base transmission but the first owner’s selection of a somewhat fragile four speed automatic transmission is evident.
While the auto rags found much to like in the 2000 GTX a lack of marketing relegated it to mere curiosity status in the market rather than a credible sales threat to the Camry or Accord. The local Chrysler/Dodge dealership would likely have pushed its customers towards a similar sized but less sophisticated Dynasty or Acclaim.
For 1991 Chrysler Canada decided to re-badge the 2000 GTX as an Eagle and again it differed from the Galant in badges only. At the same time the 2000 GTX followed the Galant with a mild refresh including an updated grill. Our example here is fitted with some larger aftermarket wheels and window tint but otherwise stock looking. The 2000 GTX joined an Eagle line-up which was an eclectic mix of oddballs, cast offs and orphans but surprisingly while neither car is common today I would say I see more Eagle variants than Dodge ones. The Eagle 2000 GTX was sold from 1991 to 1993 before being axed in favor of an over hauled Chrysler line up including the full sized LH sedans, compact Neon as well as the soon to be introduced and similarly sized Breeze/Cirrus/Status triplets.
While this slightly battered base model Dodge 2000 GTX is unlikely to set anyone’s heart aflutter it was an important car that allowed Chrylser Canada to offer customers something a bit more modern than a K-car variant. The higher specification examples offered a glimpse ahead with their powerful DOHC four cylinder engines and available all wheel drive. Survivors here in Canada are rare due to low sales and orphan status but a determined person could more easily source Galant parts south of the border.
The 1989-90 Galant apparently was a very good car. My boss at the time bought one of these, and he was a die-hard yuppie-type that didn’t go the entry-level BMW/Pontiac Grand Am route.
I used to look over his car from time to time and even checked one out at a local dealership and I came away quite impressed.
Would I have bought one? At the time, not on your life, because it was a foreign car! Besides, our Chrysler products served us quite well.
My mother had a 1992 Mitsubishi Galant brand new but it was a lemon. A/C vents broke after only one year, fuel injectors collapsed in 2 years, transmission in 3 years and the SOHC engine was underpowered. Fortunately Mitsubishi offered a good warranty and maintenance program in Puerto Rico back in the day, so mom didn’t have to spend a cent on the repairs.
It was a good looking car though.
We had a 1989 Magna, the Aussie-market widened version, for 11 years and 240,000km. Only thing that went wrong was the shift linkage (manual) broke after five years, leaving us with no first or second gear. Easily fixed by a local garage. We always felt we were driving a far better car than we should have been able to get for the price, compared to my wife’s previous Toyota. Vastly underrated cars, both then and now.
The 1989 Magna was based on the previous model Galant. They sold this model as a sedan or hatch here with the 4-cyl and a 2.0 V6 – you have to ask why! I don’t think they sold very well.
Concerning to the subject of borrowed Mitsubishis by the Chrysler Corp. here is a fine example. The photo was taken in Hungary (not in America) few weeks ago which gives a bit essence to these ordinary cars. Plymouth Colts, moreover two of them next to each other in a same parking lot!
Those are very much like the Dodge Colt “mystery sedan” that I wrote about here some time ago.
The left one still has the (damaged) “Plymouth Colt” self adhesive decals but no signs of the dealer. The right one wears only the “Bancroft” dealer decal which might be attached before the Colt had been exported from the North-Americas…to Hungary as a probably used car…
By the way these 4 door Colts have nice body proportions… Lovely cars.
Chrysler whole Mitsubishi captive import thing has always been strange to me. I get that it was to broaden Chrysler’s offerings while at the same time giving Mitsubishi a foothold in the North American market, but the lack of effort on Chrysler’s part to give these cars any distinction has never sat right with me. It made them seem like orphan cars. I don’t think they sold many of them besides Colts early on.
On another note, this slightly smaller Mitsubishi Mirage clone, the U.S.-market Eagle Summit sedan was on eBay about two years ago. I saved some pictures.
I wonder about the same thing. Was it prejudice against “rice burners,” or did dealers merely make less profit off captive imports?
I remember the Fiesta costing more than the larger Escort in ’81, but that was easily explained by exchange rates.
You’ve read my thoughts 🙂 I was hesitating about mentioning the Summit too while I attached the “white twins” Plymouth Colt photo…Otherwise in that neighbourhood exists only 1 Eagle Summit still as a daily driver. Unfortunately I did not took pic about it. Among others I saw a 1st gen Dodge Stealth sitting in a yard at a used car dealership. All of these cars are rarities in our terms.
where’s the wagon? where’s the wagon? i know they made one. looked pretty durn good too, esp the 6th and 7th generations ~1987-1998. for some reason i’ve always liked the way these looked, esp in wagon form.
The wagon didn’t rock up until gen8. Our NZ-new wagons were badged Galant; the JDM ones are badged Legnum. Plenty of Galants and Legnums in NZ in all variants – 4-cylinder/V6, manual/auto, FWD/4WD, turbo, diesel etc etc
Are you thinking of the Colt Wagon? There was the Colt Vista, kind of a high-roof thing, sort of like the late 80’s Civic Wagon but there was also a regular wagon based on the 4-door Colt (Mitsu Mirage). It had the diagonal taillight design that was quite distinctive.
…or perhaps the Diamante Wagon?
Built by Mitsubishi Australia!
I recall seeing a few of these in the 90s and being confused as hell. It wasn’t until I went to Canada in 1998 that I found out I wasn’t crazy. Someone at work drives this.
A big thank you to you David: you’ve taught me something new – I had no idea that the Galant was sold as a Dodge/Eagle in Canada! Very nicely styled car inside and out.
Galants were always very popular as new cars in New Zealand, and then as used-JDM imports. Still plenty around – although this generation is getting a thinner on the ground. We still get Galants here, albeit it’s now just a badge on the used-JDM-import current Lancer.
My parents bought one of these new (a Galant) in 1990. Only lasted 5 years and about 100K before it began the infamous Mitsubishi oil burn. Rather nice driver when it was new, for the time. Honda smoothness, but definitely not Honda or Toyota reliability. Not sure why they choose a Galant over and Accord or Camry. I wasn’t around at the time to help them with the decision.
But unfortunately I WAS available to help them replace it.. with another Mitsubishi. And I have no one to blame but myself. A 1995 Diamante wagon. Smooth, soft, heavy, slow, yet paradoxically looking every bit the cut-rate BMW. It was a demo with super low miles, and despite its ludicrous $35,000 list price, we picked it up for less than half that, as I recall.
The Diamante ran very nicely for the first 60K or so, then the expensive problems began to surface. Endless transmission headaches, the brakes seemed perpetually warped (apparently the wagon at nearly 3700 lbs was just too heavy for the sedan sourced brakes) and as I recall the AC started breaking constantly. Then the 3.0 SOHC V6 began to burn oil at a horrendous rate. Somewhere around 150K or so, clouds of blue smoke that would have done a 400,000 mile Crown Vic Taxi proud began to spout from the tailpipe, especially on startup. It was a very quiet car, which ended up working to its detriment, because you couldn’t hear the valves tapping furiously as the oil level plummeted after a long highway drive until you put down the window with the engine running.
The final straw was when even the local mechanic who was famous for “helping” older cars pass emissions said it would take an engine rebuild this time. This was in 2003 at 175K and my parents had had it with the heap. Mitsubishi got off to such a promising start in the late 80’s and early 90’s. But they started making indifferent cars that no one remembered for anything except their unreliability.
In the end, the Diamante was “traded” for a Subaru Outback wagon with just 11,000 miles. At the time, it was the best (and virtually only) choice if you wanted a smallish AWD wagon. The dealer gave them exactly $0 for the Diamante in trade. As the salesman put it “you got 8 years and 175K out of it. It doesn’t owe you anything.”
And this is why car dealers are thieves. They didn’t even give you scrap value? Pathetic.
Haha, CC-effect: I just nipped home from work and nearly t-boned a silver ’87 Galant, practically identical to the feature car. Driven by an elderly man and his wife, he pulled out right in front of me, then trundled down the road ahead of me travelling at 30km/h in the 50 zone, all the while blowing loads of blue smoke out the exhaust at me…
“Mitsubishi had no official presence in Canada at the time”
When did Mitsubishi enter the Canadian market? Were there any other examples of Mitsubishi products that were sold by Chrysler brands only in Canada (not the U.S.) due to the lack of a Mitsubishi channel to sell them through?
I may be wrong but IIRC Mitsubishi entered Canada in 2002-2003. Along with the Gallant clone there was the Eagle Talon, Plymouth Laser, Dodge Colt, Dodge Raider and the D50 small pick up that was sold as the Mighty Max done south, great little trucks.
There may have been others but that’s all I can remember.
I think it was roughly 2003 as well. We got the usual Colts, Talons, etc in the 80s and 90s. The Eagle Vista and Summit were Canada specific models during this time I believe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Vista
https://www.flickr.com/photos/daveseven/4857802371/
We also got the Dodge Arrow (US just got the Plymouth)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/daveseven/2745775202/
Also going way back we got a Japanese Plymouth Cricket (as well as the Dodge Colt)
I always felt this Galant generation would have sold better if it used the JDM Eterna Sava body with the elongated rear window design:
That’s one of the reasons I love this site. I had no idea the ’88-’92 Galant was sold as a Dodge in Canada. I also remember the Hyundai Excel being sold as the Mitsubishi Precis for whatever reason in the US market. what was the rationale for that?
I sold Mitsubishis for several years in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This model Galant was loved or hated. I think if they were maintained meticulously then you could get a lot of miles out of them and they were relatively trouble free. I remember customers raving about them and also cursing them! Overall, I think Mitsubishis were very underrated. Except for the Chrysler-influenced product (Eclipses with the Chrysler engines and transmissions were an absolute nightmare!) the real, true blue Japanese-made Mitsubishi products were very nice vehicles.
I always thought these were cleanly styled little cars, and the VR-4 model was a nice little sports sedan with AWD and the turbo motor. One of those in good shape would still be a fun car. It’s a shame we didn’t get the VR-4 version two generations after this one (late 90’s to mid 00’s) though. Those were legit screamers, with close to 300 HP and very slick styling. We only got the more pedestrian version of that generation, and they all seem to have descended into beater status.
There was also the slightly Saab-esque hatch version. The VR-4 was ‘only’ rated at 200 hp in road trim though, there might have been higher outputs in Japan I suppose.
I remember going into a Dodge (or maybe Eagle) dealer to look at one of these in Calgary. It was a gtx awd with a 5 speed. It drove nicely but didn’t have a lot of power. I asked, “where is the VR-4 version?” and the salesman looked at me like I was nuts.
I had a soft spot for Mitsubishi, coming off a Dodge Challenger, which was a flawed but fun car and a pretty good university beater. I really wanted an Eclipse/Talon but couldn’t afford it.
I ended up buying an Integra instead, drove it for 12 years and never regretted that purchase. I probably “dodged” a bullet there.
Thank you for the trip down memory lane.
I had 2, 1989 Dodge 2000GTX Twincams with ECS and 1, 1992 Eagle 2000GTX SOHC Auto.
The twincams were vastly underrated cars. They drove really well and had enough get go when called upon. They were also well built and very safe cars in a crash (i was unfortunately the test dummy).
I also had 2, Eagle Talons TSI AWDs (a 91 and 92) and the 2000GTX would out handle them stock for stock on a twisty back country road.
Where the money went.
Hi! Im from Chile and i Have i Mitsubishi Galant GS 2.0, but i gotta feeling that is more like a 2000GTX as Yours, it doesnt match the tecnology that has with the galant’s brand.
Do you have a manual that u can share so i could clear my doubt? Or maybe ( if u want) have some conversation about?
Sorry my english, i talk spanish, hope u understand