YORK, England — The mainstream EV continues to be a bit too younger to be simple to seek out within the automobile graveyards I frequent (although I have documented a couple of, together with Toyota’s RAV4-based competitor to the GM EV1), however I stay hopeful that I will run throughout a discarded Mitsubishi i-MiEV throughout my junkyard travels. This may be tough, since Mitsubishi bought simply over 2,000 examples of the short-range electrified kei automobile in america earlier than discontinuing its sale right here in 2016. Nonetheless, I managed to seek out one of many i-MiEV’s gasoline-fueled brethren in a knacker’s yard throughout the Atlantic: a Mitsubishi i.
Sure, I traveled to Northern England in January with the first purpose of visiting one among solely two American-style self-service scrapyards in Nice Britain (that is what they name them over right here): the U-Pull-It in York, which is owned by Dallas-based Copart. You will be seeing many attention-grabbing discarded automobiles from that all-too-brief journey, so you’ll want to examine in right here commonly.
The i (there should be a world treaty forbidding the usage of a single lower-case letter because the designation for a automobile mannequin, in addition to automobiles with punctuation marks of their names) was constructed from the 2006 by 2013 mannequin years. Supposedly its title refers back to the pronunciation for the Japanese phrase for “love.” With a view to meet kei requirements in its homeland, it was fitted with a rear-mounted engine displacing simply 0.659 liters.
It seems that the internal-combustion-powered i used to be constructed solely in right-hand-drive configuration, so Mitsubishi restricted exports to drive-on-the-left locations corresponding to Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK. The MSRP for a brand new 2008 i within the UK was £9,084, or about £14,173 after inflation (that is about $17,992 in 2024 {dollars}).
Evidently the i used to be simply too weird-looking and too gradual to attraction to many British automobile customers. Immediately’s Junkyard Scrapyard Gem was one among a mere 303 examples of the Mitsubishi i exported to Europe.
The i used to be accessible solely with a four-speed computerized transmission.
The engine compartment refused to open, and I grew bored with beating up my frozen fingers attempting to pressure it open within the 29°F chill of North Yorkshire on a January morning … so this is the most effective shot of the turbocharged DOHC three-banger I used to be capable of get. That is 63 horsepower on faucet, which ends up in about the identical power-to-weight ratio because the 1996 Subaru Sambar Dias II Maleza Tremendous Charger that’s my present each day driver in Colorado (it is on the pokey aspect however can handle freeway speeds nicely sufficient).
The issue with digital odometers in your intrepid searcher for high-mile junkyard odometer readings is that you want to energy up the automobile’s ECM to be able to show their ultimate readings. Fortuitously, the staff of U-Pull-It York are variety sufficient to shoot pictures of gauges with the ignition turned on whereas processing new arrivals, so we are able to see that this automobile had 50,803 miles on the clock when a fender-bender took it off the road.
The i-MiEV went into manufacturing in 2009, and left-hand-drive variations had been constructed for export. Here is the one entered by Mitsubishi within the 2012 Pikes Peak Worldwide Hill Climb, which was inventory apart from security gear (it completed sixth within the Electrical Automobile class, with a time of quarter-hour and 10.557 seconds).
The electron-fueled model of the i remained in manufacturing for eight years after curtains for the gas-burner, with almost 30,000 bought worldwide. It was the revolutionary i (to not be confused with the hungry i) that opened the door for these automobiles, so I am proud to have discovered an instance of this little bit of automotive historical past.
That includes music by Yumi Matsutoya.
Toyota had emphasised the egg form of the Estima van (generally known as the Previa right here) in its JDM promoting of a decade earlier, however that did not cease Mitsubishi from doing the identical with the i.