Rallying challenge

Press, 8 March 1984, Page 24

Rallying challenge

Mitsubishi Motors will return to serious rallying to challenge West Germany’s Audi and Opel, Italy’s Lancia and Ford of Europe in World Rally Championship events, starting with the British ’ RAC . Rally in November. The Japanese company • unveiled its challenger, the four-wheel-drive Starion, at the Geneva Motor Show. Mitsubishi is spending the equivalent of $6 million in the first year of a major rallying effort with its new turbocharged four-wheel-drive car. The main thrust of the challenge will be at the four-wheel drive Audi

Quattro, which has already competed in New Zealand world championship rallies. The four-wheel-drive Starion has already undergone extensive European testing, some of it in Scotland, the home of the Mitsubishi rally team manager, Andrew Cowan, who has rallied in New Zealand in the past, winning two international events. According to Cowan, Mitsubishi is making a serious return to rallying after a three to four-year break. Cowan, accompanied by Johnstone Syer, finished third over all in this year’s Paris-Algiers-Dakar Rally

and won the modified and unmodified four-wheel-drive production categories, covering 10,000 kilometres in 20 days in a Mitsubishi Pajero, which was powered by a turbocharged version of the 2.3-litre diesel engine used in the Mitsubishi L2OO utility produced by Todd Motors in New Zealand.

The Pajero has been in production for two years and has already proved its reliability over the toughest routes and against longerestablished four-wheel-drive- vehicles.

Todd Motors will import a shipment of built-up Pajeros later this year.