For many of us in the Gen X and Gen Y generations, DSMs like this 12,613 mile Mitsubishi Eclipse GS Turbo hatchback were among the cars we pined to drive in high school. The ultimate trim was the turbocharged GSX with all-wheel drive, but for a track car, sticking with the lighter-weight front driver makes sense. This example was bought to be used as a track car from new but ended up being parked and discovered in an estate sale in Florida. Find the low-mileage Eclipse here on eBay with bidding over $2K and no reserve. 

Based on the team name of “Woodstock Motorsports” and Nashua Mitsubishi sponsorship, this Eclipse was bought and converted somewhere in New England before making the trek down south. Some of the other names on the car indicate sponsorship and/or ownership by an artist gallery with locations in New York, Maine and Florida, so you can begin to put the pieces together of how it ended up here. More of a mystery is why it was retired and found as part of an estate cleanout, as HPDE cars like these tend to find new homes quickly via classifieds in magazines like Grassroots Motorsports, chock full of race cars looking for new homes. The body looks quite nice, but it’s hard to tell if the purple base coat is custom or a wrap.

Here you can see the original color is blue; hopefully, it’s just trapped under a vinyl wrap and not custom paint. The Eclipse is street-legal, notes the seller, and the driving event components we can see all look like top-grade materials. A full cage, OMP racing bucket, harness, cut-off switch, Speedline wheels – the list goes on, but it doesn’t appear so extensive that you couldn’t return it to stock and sell off the aftermarket upgrades to recoup your investment. The seller notes that while it runs and drives, its extended sleep likely demands some level of mechanical refreshing is done before daily driving, let alone heading to the track.

One of the drivers’ names, Jim Bryant, appears here in a listing of racer profiles and histories. The Eclipse is listed as competing in the 1990 IMSA Firestone Firehawk event, confirming it left the showroom and went directly into race duties. The record indicates Bryant achieved one podium finish, so perhaps this car had a decent history when it ran. The records also indicate Bryant moved onto a Taurus SHO the next season, so the hours on this track-build could be quite low. No matter which way you take it – a gentle resurrection for HPDEs or autocross, or a tear-down and return to stock – you end up with a seriously fun-to-drive car with under 20,000 original miles. Win-win.