1995 Mitsubishi 3000GT SL

If I’m honest when someone asks me how many cars I have I have to stop and think about it for a bit. I can sit there and go into detail about each and every car’s story but coming up with something as simple as a number of cars on the spot seems like a moving target.

This post is the first of the current fleet as of the end of 2020. I will go through them in the order they were acquired since my goal is to go into the backstory of each.

My Dad drove a Mitsubishi Galant 5-speed most of my childhood having bought it new in 1990 when I was 4. Following that he drove a couple Mitsubishi Diamantes the first of which I drove for a few months after I got my license. He hadn’t had a sports car since before us kids in the early 80s and I was pretty into Mitsubishi riding around in his most of my life.

I don’t recall how or why but we got on a kick to find a 5-speed 3000GT to buy as a joint purchase in the spring of 2002 after I had my license for a few months and didn’t know yet how to drive manual. We test drove a blue one first but the guy was firm on price at $14,000 if memory serves and it had 80,xxx miles and we found this pearl white one at a local Ford dealer 7 years old with just under 25,000 miles listed for about the same price.

I think my Dad enjoys negotiating more than actually driving the cars and he worked the dealer down to $13,000 with me kicking his leg under the table because I wanted the car so bad! My life savings fell a bit short of half but he went ahead with the deal anyway.

After my Dad taught me how to drive stick in it I drove the hell out of it putting as many miles on it in a year as it had clocked in its first 7 years. When I was 18 my Dad bought me out of it and I took that money and I bought my first project car…a 1993 Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX.

Over the next 12 years I tackled more and more repair jobs on the car including a clutch in 2007. In 2016 Dad finally replaced it with a Corvette and I bought it back with just over 100,000 miles.