Toyota to start producing parts for supras

[red_devil]

https://www.thedrive.com/news/31780/toyota-is-making-all-new-parts-for-your-80s-and-90s-supra

Nissan and now Toyota are helping out enthusiasts with new parts from the factory. If only Mitsubishi would give a toss about all of us DSMers. We could get window trims, evo 3 gearing, rear diff parts and axles, side skirts to name a few. Oh well I'm sure they need to focus on the Eclipse Cross...

 

[rabenne]

They need to worry about making money from what I can tell... because their presence has been on the outs for a LONG time. Not to say that they couldn't make some money on repop parts, but they really should focus their engineering efforts on bringing a car to market that people will actually WANT to buy.

Mitsubishi Motorway in Normal, IL was recently renamed Rivian Motorway cry: this is literally where I learned to tune my car using link). I actually applied for an engineering job at Rivian because I was curious about the old plant and what DSM artifacts might still exist, but I didn't make it past the phone interview.

 

[Salty-Seagull]

I was just talking about Nissan doing this with the Skyline the other day. Sounds like Mazda is getting on the bandwagon too!

I am not holding my breath that Mitsubishi will make new DSM parts though, but it sure would be nice because some of these parts are pretty darn hard to find these days.

As for Mitsubishi's viability, on their website they claim to be the fastest-growing Asian brand in the U.S. for the second consecutive year: https://media.mitsubishicars.com/channels/Sales

Plus they just moved their headquarters to Franklin, TN, so I would be shocked if they didn't stick around for a while.

 

[Kryndon]

When it comes to smaller parts, the real cost comes from the tooling required for manufacturing said parts. But given that these are old parts which have been made before, it would be a matter of dusting off the old tooling and churning out a few thousand parts to have a nice stockpile of. However, we have no idea whether Mitsubishi kept all the old tools for many of the in-house made parts. Especially with DSMs, many of the non-engine related parts were made by US-based manufacturers. Like, the only things actually made in Japan by Mitsubishi and installed onto our cars were the 4G6 engines and the F5/W5 transmissions and drivetrain. Almost everything else was made by outsourced companies, which means that, 20 years later, Mitsubishi wont be able to get those parts out again unless they manufacture entirely new tooling for all the non-Mitsu parts and start churning them out themselves.

 

[BLACK'98DSM]

There has already been a thread made where we list what DSM parts we need. But nothing serious went on there. We need to make a thread where all the freelancers and fabricators can contribute, and in this thread we need to make a checklist of parts that are no longer produced but are needed. If we could even get, say, one person per part, we could have them all made.

Just a thought I figured I'd throw out there, I do strongly believe this could work if we all put our knowledge and effort into it.

 

[91talonts1]

It would be awesome but I don't think this will ever happen with Mitsubishi unfortunately. Nissan owns like a third of Mitsubishi motors now. Mitsubishi seems to be more focused on their other ventures than the Motors division these days.

 

[Jon Lane]

Lack of support is ironic for the 4G63t/4B11t and DSM because that combination would also make a low cost Porsche Cayman and Boxster-beater virtually off the shelf. The transverse four drive package could drop behind the seats in the short fender, long quarter panel body Eclipse and Talon.