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Nobutaka Imada

Nobutaka Imada

MitsubishiDevelopment team member

Timeline

  1. 1990
    Eclipse 1st generation
    Eclipse 1st generation

    1990–1995Development team member

    Searching for a "Wow!" interior with styrene board

    Entrusted with the interior of the first car Mitsubishi would build locally in the United States, Imada aimed for a newness that would surprise Americans. The interior studio had a custom called "Oyakama": when they were stuck, even people in charge of other projects would gather and throw out ideas. Imada and his team put neat sketches and drawings aside, and from doodle-like drawings they quickly turned ideas into three dimensions by adding styrene board onto a disused instrument-panel model, then discussed them together. From this came the form that linked the gauges, the central vents and the air-conditioning dials like a fan and flowed on down to the floor console. While they were searching for an atmosphere in which the driver sinks in behind a high console, a Pontiac Fiero catalog arrived from the US studio with a note saying "we felt the high center console gave it a sports-car character," and they grew confident in their direction.

    A Chrysler exterior with a Mitsubishi interior

    In March, while the interior model was still being made, the exterior proposals of Mitsubishi and Chrysler were each reviewed, and the base also changed from the Mirage to the one-size-larger Galant. The exterior was finally settled on Chrysler's proposal, an unusual combination in which another company's exterior and Mitsubishi's interior came together in one car. Imada felt that Chrysler's hot exterior was a perfect match for their interior. In September of the same year, Imada attended a consumer survey in Oakland, California, comparing the interior with those of the RX-7, Prelude, Fiero and others. The sporty atmosphere and the new instrument panel were well received, and people from Chrysler who had come to the survey also told him they liked it.

    Mitsubishi

Profile

A Mitsubishi interior designer. While leading the interior team for the third-generation Mirage, he was given the interior design of the first-generation Eclipse, which he worked on with Eiichi Okuma.

Translated from Japanese sources.

Mitsubishi engineers

All Mitsubishi engineers