These cars are never going to be the most reliable cars on the face of the earth. Mitsubishi is at best fifth-rate among Japanese car companies and I'd rank Chrysler among the lowest of all car companies for quality in the 90's. You're talking about a 2g so Chrysler doesn't factor in, but still, the build quality is not the same as a Toyota or a Honda. Then you put the car through 10 years of neglect and abuse because it's a relatively inexpensive sporty car and the kind of people that buy them typically abuse them. It's just not a formula for reliability.

Anyway, if you really want to modify the car later on, I strongly suggest you do your best to find a turbo car. If you know you want more power, why would you start out with a car that has less power and is much harder to make power with? It's not any harder to bolt an exhaust onto a GST than is it to bolt it onto an RS, but with the GST you'll make 20 horsepower and on the RS you'll make 5. I can understand it when people who have had nonturbo cars for a while and then decide they want to go faster upgrade them, but if you know you want to modify the car, you should start out with the turbo platform.