(car revving)
- [Announcer] Wow!
- When you do go back home to visit your family, friends,
you inevitably become 12 years old again.
Your girlfriend gets jealous
and you relive the delicious meals
that used to be prepared for you by your mother.
Okay, You find out she no longer makes those things
for you anymore, instead you go to dinner.
TGI Fridays or some (bleep) like that.
And you get sad.
You wonder what happened to your favorite dish,
or what happened to that high school superstar
that you ran into who seemed like
they were three nights away from the clink.
You just start to wonder what happened
when you left that tiny little hometown.
What happened to my spaghetti?
What happened to those burnt out high school geniuses?
Okay, that's kind of like the car
that I'm about to talk about.
I'm Alex, Alex.FI on Instagram
and it is today's first ever episode of "What Happened?"
We're gonna be talking about
just what exactly happened and why and how
we found out just what happened and where it happened
and who murdered the Mitsubishi Eclipse.
(upbeat music) (car revving)
I'm Alex, and if you're looking for wheel and tire packages,
suspension, and parts for your car,
be sure to check us out over at fitmentindustries.com
Where you can get some stuff and things
because we bought a ton of it and it's now in stock
and available to ship in as little as seven days,
including our very own in-house brand
that we just launched this year
called Artisa ArtFormed wheels.
Be sure to check it out and of course,
if you're looking for 0% financing,
you want to get some low monthly payments.
We do have that stuff available as well.
Especially, as everybody's getting ready
to go back to school.
You can still build your car and go to school.
Don't talk to me about FAFSA.
I know exactly what you do with that sort of money
'cause I was there too.
And drop a comment below
on what the next video should be about
in regards to figuring out just what happened.
I don't know why I keep doing that.
But no, I can't just do your relationships though.
That's not gonna be an episode.
It probably just has to do with you
being a terrible communicator,
and her believing that the notebook
is an actually historically accurate film.
The Mitsubishi Eclipse is like a pillar vehicle
in the automotive community.
Especially for those specifically
that are over the age of 25
because a lot of these cars, I'd say even 30,
these cars were one of the pillar vehicles to modify
if you were in like the late 1900s.
No, if you were in like the late 1990s.
The main reason for that was because
of what the Mitsubishi Eclipse was founded off of,
which was Diamond-Star Motors,
a the, then collaboration between Chrysler Mitsubishi,
whom each needed a vital part of each other's business.
Otherwise they'd both fail.
This is kind of like the thing that Toyota and BMW
are doing right now with the Supra,
but on a much larger scale.
Consider it a group project,
but you'd actually like your partners.
I remember one time I was doing a project in college
and the guy said that he couldn't do his portion
'cause he had a Pick-a-Palooza to go to at 12 o'clock,
which is just drinking at a (bleep) bar for 12 hours
and I almost killed him.
But this partnership did work.
Chrysler benefited from the imported sales of Mitsubishi
and Mitsubishi benefited because they were finally
making enough money to try new things.
But Mitsubishi has this like up and down thing
when it comes to sales.
And even though this collaboration created
a little bit of confusion,
mostly because of an imported Mitsubishi,
almost completely competing against a Chrysler equivalent.
They would have never made a baby
called Diamond-Star Motors with production
within the United States,
that was a joint venture that kind of helped solve
a couple of two, three of those issues
and allowed the cars to essentially prosper and grow.
That's what makes these cars DSM, all right?
And since the conception,
the Eclipse was born and from that,
the partnership would blossom into a beautiful relationship
that made people look at them and say,
"Is that a profile picture?
Because they're just so perfect."
The car was incredible and almost everyone had loved it.
The first generation had a turbocharged four cylinder,
all-wheel drive and nearly 200 horsepower,
which was incredibly close to the Mustang
that came with 225 at the time.
And this was a budget Japanese tuner car.
And while it had a couple of issues
like a transfer case lubrication thing.
Most people overlooked that in favor
of the fact that it was just an affordable car
that had enough bones to modify it
to beautiful, beautiful power.
And it didn't matter if you had plastic goodness
on the interior.
And the fact that everything shook
when you gave her a little tippity tap
with the tinker toes, you know,
and then you just had some oil sucking power,
it was still fun!
And people loved the fact that the market
had something different than just domestic power.
The success came from the increased partnership
between the brands as well.
You had Chrysler's distribution network,
you had part accessibility and you even had labor staff
to inject into this new factory
that was located in the United States for DSM.
On the other side of the fence,
you had Mitsubishi, somewhat-ish, lean management system
and production documents
that made it easy to get it up and rocking
without having to start from scratch.
And the second gen Eclipse just furthered that
with more power, more design love,
and likely reached like the pinnacle point
of the partnership goodness of Mitsubishi and Chrysler.
- You're my best friend!
You're my best friend!
- And even a bit of competition love
from Nissan, Mazda and Toyota at the time.
Mitsubishi was actually competing with these cars,
and they weren't backing out
of any of the competition whatsoever.
And I think that's just what made
the second gen Mitsubishi Eclipse just so damn good.
Now the second generation Eclipse for people like you
and people like me,
it was the best Eclipse probably ever made.
Fight me and the other 61,000 people
that bought one back in 2000.
But just like every other fantastic platform
that came out of the partnerships,
like Diamond-Star Motors, Toyota, Mazda and more.
The following generation after that pinnacle high
of the late 1990s would just not hit the mark.
Just a blue splash, no red splash happened with that hit.
And it was pretty much like the equivalent
of the "Bad Boys" sequel.
And even with the increased sales peaking
to about 70,000 units.
With the third generation, it immediately collapsed
because it lost almost all of its enthusiast luster.
Because they dropped all the goodies
and they moved the platform to a 4G64, 6G72.
It's a non-turbo, non-all-wheel drive model
with a more unique-ish body style.
It was more normal, more regular
like non-enthusiasts things.
Like they were just trying to make it cool for everyone,
and a wider marketing strategy.
I mean more than just the hot boy
and hot girl racers out there,
which essentially kind of crippled
the entire mark of the brand.
If it doesn't matter if Tyrese Gibson drives around
in a chrome plated Eclipse
and the baddest Fast and the Furious movie
to ever come out because people
really didn't sink their teeth into this platform.
And after 2002, units on the Eclipse went from 70,000 units,
to 38,000, down to 19,000 units moved annually.
So it just fell apart.
Now the future Eclipses continued to dwindle
until eventually Mitsubishi declared
that they would be ending the Eclipse name.
Citing its death as a refocus for the company
to go green with electric vehicles and crossovers.
How do you go from new hotness to old and busted
with something like Mitsubishi?
It just blows my mind, okay, and that's the problem here.
Mitsubishi had so much going for them specifically
in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s,
but it had the success of the late 90s platform
as a whole.
The growth of the brand name in the United States.
People were beginning to recognize Mitsubishi much more
than they had before.
And the connections with Chrysler,
which pretty much allowed them to sell their cars
pretty much everywhere at fantastically low price points
in the United States.
They pretty much had everything that they would need in 2021
to be a successful car company.
How does something like that even die?
Not only that, but the starved resources from Mitsubishi
in terms of capital like money,
which was felt across the entire lineup of their cars.
You can see it literally in the way
that they design their cars in the early 2000s.
It was a rough time.
Battling the impeding competition of sports cars too,
in the early 2000s from the likes of Honda, Hyundai,
Pontiac and more.
Mitsubishi opted to go more conservative
with the Eclipse mark, than fighting and raising the bar.
And that raising bar lifted the automotive enthusiast
out of the third and fourth generation Eclipse
and onto other platforms like the SRT-4.
Mitsubishi did have the Mitsubishi Evo, okay?
Which was their crown jewel.
And there was likely a conversation whether
the two platforms in similar markets,
was the right idea in the United States.
But for the bias enthusiast in me,
the answer is always yes.
You can also have an SI and a S-2000.
You can also have two different marks,
like a 718 and a 911.
You can, and you should.
The Evolution back in 2003, though,
had an MSRP of right around $30,000.
With the Eclipse coming in only $5,000 less.
So while it made it little bit under the cut,
a lot of people just ended up not really liking that
because you had so much internal hemorrhaging of value.
And that had a lot to do with Mitsubishi
being unable to control the costs of the Eclipse.
And it's now gray area market focused.
The consumer ultimately would jump up $5,000
and buy the Evo.
The Mitsubishi Eclipse died officially
when they announced it as a crossover badge.
And it's unlike anything similar to other brands doing it.
It's popcorn without the butter.
It's like coffee without creamer.
And if you like black coffee, that's okay too.
But it just means you're dead on the inside.
And while there are others,
some incredible third and fourth gems out there
that have gone out to restore their cars
to their former DSM style glory,
adding all-wheel drive and turbos as needed,
the first and second gen Eclipses
were the epitome of success. Okay.
And their downfall came from nothing more than the company
being unwilling to take a risk into their future.
And the sports car segment with more than one mark.
And we saw how that ultimately ended up going
now that the Evolution is also dead.
But why do you think the Mitsubishi Eclipse died?
Let us know below and, of course,
put in for aftermarket wheels, tires and suspension
for your newly acquired Mitsubishi Eclipse.
Be sure to check us out over at fitmentindustries.com.
And if you have any, be sure to drop a comment on
what you'd like to see us talk about next in this series,
kind of like the episode you want that we did.
We also want to ask y'all,
what do you think we should talk about?
What happened to something in the industry?
Drop a comment below.
We'll be looking at every single one
to see what we want to cover next week.
Otherwise, I'm Alex and we'll see you later.
Peace.
(upbeat music)