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The legendary West Coast delicacy that is In-N-Out Burger has an incredibly simplistic menu that has hardly changed throughout its 75-year history, and yet the In-N-Out behind my apartment building has a line wrapping around the block every single day. Sometimes you have to know when you get a recipe right; you don’t always have to reinvent the wheel every couple of years to remain relevant. In contrast to the food industry, car companies face significantly more roadblocks that arise as time passes in the form of emissions and crashworthiness regulations, but some carmakers still know how to hold back.
The Porsche 911 is a perfect example of a company exercising restraint. It has been around for over 60 years with an engine slung out behind the rear axle and squashed Volkswagen Beetle looks, and yet the 911 is perpetually popular. Not all cars enjoy the same consistently great trajectory as the venerable Porsche 911, though. Sometimes automakers fumble a pass and end up tarnishing the reputation of a once-loved model by digressing from its original mission.
For its third generation, Mitsubishi really fumbled the Eclipse. The first- and second-generation cars were smaller, sportier, and offered rowdy turbocharged powertrains. The third-generation Eclipse ended up sharing a platform with Mitsubishi’s Galant midsize family sedan, which caused it to grow in size and weight. To top it off, Mitsubishi dropped the previous Eclipse’s turbocharged 2.0-liter inline-4 engine that produced 210 horsepower and 214 pound-feet of torque in favor of a 3.0-liter V6 that produced 205 hp and 205 lb-ft. As soon as the third-gen Eclipse reached the hands of the automotive press it was written off as a big, heavy and lazy shadow of the prior two generations. The following fourth-generation Eclipse got even bigger and more bulbous, and Mitsubishi was never able to regain the trust of enthusiasts. The Eclipse name now lives on in an economy crossover, which we won’t talk about.
What’s your take? Sometimes it’s best not to let the push for newness taint the original recipe, and cars like the Porsche 911 prove that point. What car’s redesign ruined the model for you?