Does anyone know if the 01 Galant has an emergency trunk release? I have an 01 GTZ and the truck won't open with neither the driver side release lever nor the key. It opened fine up until this weekend at which time I opened it normally with the key, loaded some luggage, closed it normally, got in started the car, remembered I needed something out of the luggage, tried the inside release, it didn't work, turned off the car, tried the key and it wouldn't work. I looked through the rear passenger access to see if a strap or anything got hung up in the latch but didn't see anything out of the ordinary. The only odd thing I noticed was that the trunk light was on, and has been on ever since.

In case anyone is interested, I discovered the 01 Galant does not have an emergency trunk release. I got the trunk open by having a buddy (small enough to fit through the rear seat access) unbolt the latching device from inside the trunk. Once we got it off I found the trunk light toggle switch was the culprit. It had some how gotten on the wrong side of the release mechanism and was keeping it from releasing. Poor design in my opinion.

i ran into the same issue with my 2000 ES. i had to climb through as well.. felt like jackie chan in some crazy stunt. is it possible to have anew locking mech installed maybe something more reliable?...

it should have opened with the key, unless you were using the valet key.

Thanks for the advice – the trunk light toggle switch had my trunk lid jammed for a couple of months before I found this fix! My 10 year old son crawled through the rear seat access and unbolted the latch. I have attached a few photos that show the jammed switch and the fix. Pop this switch lever and you are in!
Mine kept jamming, so I broke the tab off the switch and unplugged the trunk light.


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