Future Classic or Crusher Food? Low-Mile Mitsubishi Cordia For $4K
Back when I created the Nice Price or Crack Pipe series for Jalopnik, my favorite subjects were super-original cars that most people don’t even remember having existed; the point was to present the readers with a dilemma. Señor Emslie aka Graverobber has done a fine job carrying the NPOCP torch, but I’ve decided to keep this most agonizing of all low-mile dilemmas for my own use: an 18,630-mile Mitsubishi Cordia L.
I’ve lately become fascinated by the Cordia (and its sedan sibling, the Tredia). From the standpoint of the automotive historian, the first generation of non-Chrysler-badged Mitsubishi cars in North America is of some interest, particularly when considering that the only triple-diamond-badged car of the mid-80s that anybody recalls today is the flaky-yet-gorgeous Starion. Very few Cordias were sold in the United States, and those that developed costly problems (i.e., damn near every one) weren’t valuable enough to be worth saving; I haven’t seen one on the street for a decade, and even junked examples are about as commonplace as Aston Martin Lagondas. So here’s this showroom-condition ’85 in Florida for a mere— or is it an exorbitant?— four grand. An ’85 Celica or Maxima with this few miles on the clock and a mid-roller price tag would have dudes cold blasting each other with TEC-9s (remember, are talking about Florida here) to be the first in line to buy the thing, but a Cordia? Bundle it with a low-mile I-Mark for six grand and I’ll be on the next flight to Miami!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Hey that is my uncle's car. Garage kept its entire life. I remember when he bought it, he was looking at the Celica and 2 door 626 as well. Too bad he didn't choose one of those cars instead as he would have a desirable classic.
I just bought an 87 Corida Turbo 5 speed - We're going to Lemonize it and race it in North Carolina in March 2012.