Photography by: TR Cruz
Words by: MM Cruz
In rallying, the Galants paved the way for the Lancers. It has ALWAYS been that way. And with that, a little history lesson is in order.
Before
Mitsubishi dived into the international (read:WRC event) arena with the Safari
Rally of 1973 and reaped trophies with the Lancer 1600 GSR from ’73-’76, they
have been competing with the Colt Galant 16L GS rally car which won the 1972
Southern Cross Rally. I’ll use the same sentence and just update the details,
here goes. When Mitsubishi dived into the WRC arena and reaped trophies with
the Lancer Evolution from ’96-’99, they have been competing with the Galant VR4
rally car which won the 1992 Ivory Coast Rally. Is the parallelism clear
enough, dear students?
It is with this background that our man, Carlos Sanchez enters our story. A rally fan since the age of four and raised by a father who loves cars and happens to work in one of the biggest Mitsubishi dealers in the country, Carlos indeed has all his stars aligned for the fate of having this car you see in your screens.
He grew up with the GTi, which was silver at the time. But that isn’t this car you see here. That was sold by his dad who thought that he wanted the car, but that it would just be a passing fancy for his age. Well, that didn’t work out so ten years later, he bought his own Galant GTi…
…which is still not the one you see here. See, that model had too much work needed. He sold that but on the same year, he got the same model with a different color, and a much better condition. And that is the one you see now.
We probably all know what a stock Galant GTi looks like and that in itself is a very sexy car. But that mint condition of a GTi was just a tip of the iceberg for our man. He really went to work to make it a JDM Galant GTi.
He changed the windows to brown glass and without tint. He added Advan ART rims as an homage to the rally heritage. Front bumper, trunk and interiors, even the headlights and taillights had to conform with his passionate standards. Sure, it made the car look like a cow at some point due to the different colored parts but once it got washed over in the proper white, it looked like it was more than eager to soil itself in a rally stage.
A subtle but powerful complement to the look are the seats. Mind you, these were once part of a Galant in Monte Carlo. And with the Galant’s rally replica image, who knows if these have seen action in Col de Turini, Rallye Monte Carlo’s famous mountain stage?
What’s keeping him from converting this to a VR-4? Carlos happens to be one of the purists an unique bunch in the automotive spectrum, that like to keep the identity of their cars intact. No turbos, 4-wheel drive and 4-wheel steering that made the Galant VR4 famous on this ride. This is manufactured a GTi, and so it will remain a GTi, well, a JDM GTi.
So, this passionate rally fan is almost complete with the car. It still has the stock 145HP 4G63 that it came with – already a famous engine when it debuted on our shores. Suspension tuning is on the way, but no rally decals, just a clean white look which still gives off that rally aura that you can take it to the north of the island then south at any given day. For a JDM Galant GTi, it doesn’t get to be any cleaner than this.
“Well for me, 100% complete is confidence in its overall performance and aesthetics that I don’t have to worry about anything.” I couldn’t have said it any better.
