Junkyard Find: 1984 Plymouth Colt GTS Turbo

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

Turbocharging was big when the 80s began, and nobody liked turbocharging better by mid-decade than Chrysler, Mitsubishi, and Chrysler/Mitsubishi. Turbo Cordias, Turbo Omnis, Turbo K-cars, Turbo Starions and, of course, the various Chryslerized flavors of the Turbo Mitsubishi Mirage. I’d forgotten about the Plymouth-badged Turbo Colts, but then I found this low-mile example awaiting its date with The Crusher in a California self-service wrecking yard.

Yes, just 43,286 miles on the clock, which is low even by the lax standards to which we hold 80s Mitsubishi products. Broken speedometer cable, perhaps? Project car that sat for 20 years before an angry landlord or wife banished it?

Yeah, it’s got a Twin Stick!

This 1.6 liter engine made 102 horsepower when new. 102 horses might be laughable by 2012 standards (hell, even the ’12 Kia Rio has 138 horses), but this car weighed only 1,865 pounds and it was quick. It was also a torque-steering nightmare that did everything possible to shoot holes in the belief that all Japanese cars were reliable, but who cares? The ’84 VW Rabbit GTI weighed 1,950 pounds and had just 90 horsepower. Which would you have bought?

TURBOOOOOO!







Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • Davew833 Davew833 on Feb 12, 2013

    I bought a black one of these at a car auction in 1996 for less than $200, if I recall-- or maybe it was $225 after the buyer's fee. My first priority was to replace the steel wheels with some factory Dodge alloys. I drove it for a few months then sold it to a friend in need for $500. After a short time it broke down and he abandoned it on the street, moving out of state. Never completely paid me for it either. It was quick when it ran!

  • Gearhead77 Gearhead77 on Dec 05, 2013

    My folks had a non turbo with the twin stick at one point. It was brown and we didn't have it for to long. I was young enough that I didn't understand why. I believe it was an 80 and it was 1985 when we had it. Mitsubishi build quality wasn't much better when I bought my 04 Lancer Sportback new in 05. Ran well and was problem free, much better car mechanically than I ever expected. But it was fairly noisy, the seats sucked and most of the interior was very cheap. The paint was thin and swirled easily (black car didn't help). I supposed I got what I paid for more or less. It had a 19k sticker on it, I paid 13 after it sat for a year on the lot. I ran it as a courier as my own car. 77k in two years. One trip to the dealer for a faulty battery. It was totaled in a rear end collision that bent the car from the C pillar back. I was sick of it by then anyway.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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