Junkyard Find: 1988 Dodge Colt DL 4WD Wagon

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin
Chrysler sold various Mitsubishis badged as Dodge or Plymouth Colts from the 1971 model year all the way through 1994.Here’s a Mirage-based fifth-generation Colt in California, the final model year for the Colt station wagon, and it sports both a five-speed manual transmission and the very rare all-wheel-drive powertrain.
American car buyers could get a Mitsubishi Chariot MPV with Colt Vista badging for the 1983-1991 model years, but the true Colt wagons never sold very well over here. 1988 was the last year for the North American Colt wagon.
The four-wheel-drive/all-wheel-drive distinction hadn’t been established by automotive-industry marketing wizards by 1988, but this Colt has a genuine center-diff-equipped AWD system that — unlike the earlier generation of Japanese 4WD cars — didn’t require the driver to switch to front-wheel-drive for dry pavement.
By the early 1990s, North Americans could buy cars made by Toyota, Nissan, Honda, and Subaru with power going to all four wheels all the time, no driver decisions needed. Subaru was a little late to that party, while Audi/Volkswagen and American Motors got into the all-wheel-drive game much earlier.
A car like this would have made a lot of sense in the icy Sierras, and I found this car in a yard just about exactly halfway between Carson City and San Francisco. Michael Hohl Automotive is still around, all these years later.
Not quite 200,000 miles, but close enough.
The Colt was very affordable, and few Colt purchasers felt willing to squander extra money on an automatic transmission. This attitude changed around the time the Neon replaced the Colt, especially when the price of slushboxes plummeted.
Of course, the original buyer of this Colt did prove willing to pay for air conditioning, so maybe the five-speed was selected due to personal preference, not Thin Wallet Syndrome.
Perhaps this car was a runner at the end, but the intense stale-Marlboro stench would have put off most members of the very small pool of used-car shoppers willing to drive a cramped three-pedal vehicle with 31 years under its belt.
Disappointingly, Chrysler didn’t push the “Cyclone” branding for Mitsubishi engines over here.For links to 2,000+ additional Junkyard Finds, visit the Junkyard Home of the Murilee Martin Lifestyle Brand™.
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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  • 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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