1997 Mitsubishi 3000GT Twin Turbo review from UK and Ireland

Corroded rear steering rods, drivers side, 375GBP.

Corroded oil inter-cooler pipework round the front, 250GBP.

Stereo replaced due to sudden extreme volume changes on the old one, 200GBP.

Drivers seat worn where the seat belt rubbed.

Rear aero non-functioning and front aero cracked & worn in places.

No central locking (was there?)

The main things that attracted me to this car were the looks and the straight line pace for the money. Even at 8 years old, this car still looked stunning. Curves and swoops everywhere; low and wide with quad exhausts; mine was finished in the metallic mid-blue.

JDM models were held at 276bhp, but it was rumoured that the UK models were somewhere around 300-320bhp, so that is what I hunted down. Book 0-60mph was 5.7s, not sure if that was taken from the Japanese model or the UK version.

I had never experienced acceleration at that level, my last two cars were 0-60 ~ 7.5s, so I was totally blown away by how suddenly 1st gear took it to 40mph, and the howl was intoxicating! Each gear pulled that little bit less, but they all still pushed me back into the lovely armchair, hugging, leather seats.

The cabin was a very dark place to be, all in black trim, but it was big enough to not be claustrophobic. Each journey seemed like a special event. The car just made me feel good, driving it.

I was doing 300miles/20.75mpg between fill ups, 60-65GBP, during normal mixed driving, but on a motorway run with the cruise control on that went up, all the way to 500miles/34.6mpg.

I found the normal driving mode to be just fine for normal UK speeds and only really felt the need to use sport on twisty roads when pushing hard. The normal suspension did not seem to act quickly enough to contain the weight shifting around, but the sport mode performed adequately. However, I did not use this day to day as it made the car skittish on our roads.

I particularly enjoyed the overtaking ability offered by the turbos.

Things were not so good when it came to manoeuvring, as the car was so big and all the controls were rather heavy, plus it was really hard to tell the dimensions from the drivers seat.

Services were 275GBP from a main dealer.

I got rid of it in the end because I was paying for age/mileage repairs on an ever more frequent basis.