Junkyard Find: 1988 Dodge Colt
This ’84 Plymouth Colt Turbo caught my junkyard weather eye instantly, because early-to-mid-80s turbo econoboxes are always interesting. Then I realized that you hardly ever see regular fifth-gen Colts, on the street or in the junkyard these days, though they were once among the most commonplace subcompacts on American roads. After that, I kept my eyes open for Crusher-bound naturally-aspirated 1984-88 Colts, finally spotting this one.
One glance inside tells you: this is a 1980s Mitsubishi! Perhaps not as wild as the Cordia, but only Subaru went crazier with the Mars Base-style controls.
The cheapest Colt in ’88 listed at $5,899, which was just around a C-note more costly than the (smaller and more miserable) Chevy Sprint and (possibly even more miserable) Subaru Justy. The base Civic— which was a spartan zero-amenities model— listed at $6,095.
The previous owner listened to “Corridos Cabrones,” apparently the Mexican-cowboy counterpart to N.W.A., in the Colt.
Nobody is going to mourn the demise of another forgotten badge-engineered econobox, but it’s interesting to reflect on the once-ubiquitious cars that are no more.
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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On this one Murilee got the banner right but the text wrong. This is a base '88 Colt, not an '84 turbo Colt, which had a different body style. Anyone who criticizes these Mitsu built cars from this time period were probably never tuned into the small cars of that time period. With regular maintenance, they were the equal of any Civic or Corolla but were usually priced less than the competition. I thought the styling was usually equal or better as well. The Turbo in the '85-'88 models was only available in the 4DR models, strangely enough. The '84 Turbo was a 2 Dr hatch only.
Back in the late 80's I had a co-worker with a loaded 4dr version. It was not bad for the era. I remember the front seats being quite comfy but the overall quality was typical Mitubushi a bit below a similar Civic or Corolla. As far as 3dr hatchs go it would be nice if they offered 3dr versions of the Fit, Civic, Mazda 2 abd 3.