GALANT is a name with a past and a future for Mitsubishi Motors of Australia Limited (MMAL). It sat on the backside alongside the venerable "Valiant" moniker way back in the early 1970s when Chrysler Australia, as the company was before the Japanese took over in late 1980, complemented its largely American car-based line-up with a few choice Japanese ones. Those early GA to GD Galants quickly gained a reputation for economy and durability, and grew into the super-successful GE Sigma-Galant in 1977, thus changing the course of both the company and the Australian family car itself. So the Galant never actually went away, because the 1983 Japanese version was widened and re-engineered to become the TM Magna. It was only when MMAL developed the larger Diamante that the Magna diverted from the Galant, so the name - now nestled onto a still-medium sized sedan (and hatchback) - made a comeback in May 1989 in HG guise. But it wasn't very successful in snaring the Mazda 626 and Honda Accord buyers it was meant to, even when the revised HH model featured here arrived in September 1990. One more version, the rebodied HJ of 1993 to 1996, gave it a go, but MMAL gave it up for the long-lived TE Magna-based cars. Of course history repeats, and now, in the middle of the first decade of the third millennium, the Galant's future is entwined with MMAL once more...