Back in high school, one of my friends had a Mitsubishi 3000GT. It was a sweet car. It was beautifully styled, very fast, comfortable, and fairly fuel-efficient. I don’t see why this car would have been discontinued. But Mitsubishi decided to keep on making the Eclipse, and abandon the 3000GT. Why did they do this? I think the GT’s aesthetic appearance looked like a cross between a Ferrari and a Corvette - the Eclipse’s overbuilt body looks tremendously lame in comparison. Why did the latter win out and go on to many more generations of production, while the former just vanished into car history?
Don’t know why, but I agree, beautiful car.
I miss them as well, always wanted one still do. The 3000GT, aka the GTO was a bit heavy for still agile and elegant. Perhaps the car became a victim of its own success, requiring future generations to cost more and more and be more complex, a similar fate that ended theNissan 300ZX (aka the Fairlady Z) and the Toyota Supra? A shame though that a car is discontinued and nothing suitable or worthy is around to take its place.
Slow sales. Sales fell by 80% in the last 5 years of the car, with a similar precipitous drop in the Dodge Stealth, which was discontinued a few years prior to the Mitsubishi.
It’s the same thing that does any car in. Nobody’s buying it. If they could sell it at a profitable level they would still be making it.
No one bought it because quite frankly, it just wasn’t very good.
The top of the line version at the beginning was also loaded down with every single questionably-useful gimmick that the late '80s Japanese designed could think of - 4 wheel steering, active aero, electronic suspension, electronic automatic transmission, you name it, this thing had it. Most of this stuff was removed in the later versions in an attempt to lighten the car.
The GTO/Stealth had the misfortune of being a Front Wheel Drive (although the FWD version was never sold in the domestic market) derived “sports” car that was both relatively underpowered and also unbelievably heavy. While the VR-4 version’s AWD system couldn’t do much for the car’s handling other than so the owners don’t have to tell people they drove a FWD car. The huge, bulky transversely mounted engine and complicated turbocharging system meant that it was difficult to work on and even more difficult to modify for performance. Compared to its competition of the day, the Nissan Skyline GTR and Toyota Supra, it was not a very compelling package.
The Skyline and Supra were both also massively heavy cars with massive cast iron engines, but both were rear wheel drive (or, in the Skyline’s case, a fairly clever RWD biased AWD system) and had Inline-6 engines that were packaged a bit better in the engine bay. Both were also lighter. And much more successful.
We see a lot of grey market Japanese GTOs here in Canada - they are dirt cheap at around $7-9k Canadian and popular amongst less affluent ricers. That particular example is one of the better ones, most are in sad states of maintainance. That seller has being trying to sell it for months and will not get more than $10k for it.
The Eclipse continued to be made because it was actually made in the US at the Normal, Illinois plant under their joint venture with Chrysler. The Eclipse was also a much simpler and less expensive car, as it was essentially a 2 door Galant, and a somewhat more mainstream model. Note that the Eclipse was never sold in the Japanese market other than a few convertible models (being the only convertible Mitsubishi had anywhere at the time) imported back to Japan.
By odd coincidence, I’m in the middle of writing the third-market catalog for the 2009 Eclipse, which they’re also calling the 3800GT. It has independent suspension and traction control, but nowhere near the number of control systems that the first 3000GT had, or the current Lancer Evolution has.
ntcrawler, Datsun started with the 240Z in 1970. It later became the 260Z (when they increased the engine size), then the 300Z, and most recently the 350Z. The Z is still being made today, 38 years later. Sure, it’s had a lot of redesigns, the engine has grown, and even the company name has changed, but it’s still a Z 
Having sold parts for the Stealth model, I was glad to see them go. Quoting customers on parts for some of the stranger options only brought wailing and knashing of the teeth.
They even use a different font for the “Z”. But the ‘zee’ sound is definitely the same. 
A car mag’ I buy reviewed it as “A lot of awful car for the money” 
Maybe they meant that on a weight to dollar ratio…
I suppose Mitsubishi being hilariously bad at building cars in general and almost running themselves into bankruptcy might be another reason.
In any case I think it at least looked sweet, much cooler than the Eclipse. They should have made the Eclipse more like the GT in its body style.