The Mitsubishi 8A8 Is Not Just A Rare Engine, It Was The First V8 With Direct InjectionJalopnikShane O' DonoghueSun, September 13, 2026 at 9:05 PM UTCAdd us on GoogleMitsubishi MotorsEven in Mitsubishi's heyday of motorsport, when it dominated world rally stages with Tommi Mäkinen and tackled the desert dunes of the Paris-Dakar rally, the Japanese brand would not have been one you'd associate V8 power with. Visit the North American Mitsubishi website today and you'll find a range of SUVs and crossovers, a plug-in hybrid, the promise of an EV, and a few 4-cylinder gas-powered options. A V8 would look out of place in the modern, family-focused range. And yes, we're aware Mitsubishi did develop a V8 in 1992, but that was a 20-liter behemoth for dump trucks that featured an exhaust-brake system with the unfortunate official branding "Powertard."Yet Mitsubishi can still lay a claim as the car company behind the first direct-injection gasoline-fueled V8 put into series production. That rare engine was the Mitsubishi 8A80, the only member of the 8A8 engine family. Designed in collaboration with Hyundai for use in range-topping luxury sedans, this naturally aspirated 4.5-liter V8 produced up to 276 horsepower and 304 pound-feet of torque and was described as more powerful and yet also more efficient thanks to its fuel-injection system.Though Mitsubishi was a pioneer of direct-injection tech in gasoline engines, launching a range of different size engines using it, it wasn't the only company working on such things in the late '90s. While evidence shows that Mitsubishi and Hyundai weren't the only automakers to have experimented with spraying fuel straight into the cylinders of a V8 engine, they were the first to send one to consumers — and not in the V8-loving North American market, either. Instead, it went into a few obscure luxury sedans sold mostly in Japan and Korea, which makes it a rare find today.AdvertisementAdvertisementRead more: These Were The First Cars Ever Made By The World's Best-Known AutomakersA rare engine for rare carsHyundai Motor CompanyAlthough Mitsubishi was responsible for the GDI technology, it designed the 8A8 engine family in collaboration with Hyundai. In fact, Hyundai was responsible for most of the bottom end of the engine, while Mitsubishi took the lead on the advanced fuel-injection system and cylinder heads. The first Mitsubishis to be powered by the V8 were the Proudia and its limousine alter ego, the Dignity. These large sedans were no doubt designed to take on the might of the Toyota Century in Japan, and they replaced the Mitsubishi Debonair, a stalwart of the Japanese carmaker's lineup.Unfortunately, it seems that buyers of status-symbol sedans didn't really care that much about the technology under the bonnet, meaning that the Proudia and Dignity went down as a flop. Just 1,227 Proudias were made from 1999 to 2001, its final year of production, while a paltry 59 examples of the Dignity left the factory over the same period. While the Dignity was exclusively powered by the 8A80, the Proudia was also available with a GDI-equipped V6, and as the production stats don't list separate totals per engine, we can't be sure exactly how many packed the V8. To call it rare seems an understatement.Hyundai offered its own take on the large luxury sedan with the first-generation Equus — called the Centennial in some markets — which was optionally powered by the GDI V8 that Hyundai referred to as the G8AA. The Equus was, relatively speaking, far more successful than Mitsubishi's equivalent, selling more than 110,000 examples before replacement in 2009. Not all of those were V8s, of course, but a Korean government recall from 2004 of 29,932 Equus helps us identify that at least 3,156 of them were. Still a rare engine by any measure.AdvertisementAdvertisementWant more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox, and follow us or add us as a preferred search source on Google.Read the original article on Jalopnik.
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