Summer of 1975 I started looking at other cars, memorably a VW Scirocco — the name evokes a hot wind, blowing from North Africa across the Mediterranean to southern Europe. This was the first model year they were sold in the USA. My brother had many VWs through the years, so it wasn’t a terrible risk. I was several hundred dollars underwater with the Mazda and my dad couldn’t lend me a short term loan at the time (forced retirement was looming for him in 1976). The salesman at the westside VW dealer told me he thought it was a bad idea to finance above the value of the car, bless him.
I used to read about cars in Car & Driver and then tried to find them. There was actually an Oldsmobile Cutlass that had a manual transmission and I sat in it at the dealer — I didn’t fit, my head hit the ceiling and I couldn’t recline the seat back. Don’t remember if it was a 442 or not, but couldn’t buy a car that I couldn’t fit in. This was the closest I ever came to buying a “personal luxury coupe” but several of my friends had Monte Carlos and such.
In winter of 1976 I felt I needed to be rid of my Mazda RX-2 ASAP.
Went to Northland Dodge on Morse Road and started looking at Dodge Colts. There was no way I was going to buy an American-made MOPAR product; memories of my dad’s 1958 Dodge station wagon were still vivid (this car was up on blocks in our back yard for years). And Toyotas were starting to be a “hot car” — my brother, his sons and I visited car dealers when nobody was there and saw the markups on the window sticker for “lifetime protective coating” and “adjusted market value” and VIN etching, pin striping, etc.
I had used car phobia, a trait that was encouraged by my mother, who remembered all of the cars my mom and dad had, for better or worse, since 1935. So an “Imported for Dodge” Mitsubishi Colt seemed to be the best compromise for my budget. It was reasonably attractive, Datsun had entered their bizarre styling phase, and Honda was just establishing an American presence.
Before settling on the Colt, the salesman tried to get me to buy this “tarted-up” model, actually drove it up from the back lot to the showroom — not at my request. One employer had a 1973 Duster/Dart which was a good car, but another had a 1974 Duster/Dart which had issues — probably because 1974 introduced EPA-mandated emission controls. (As is known, the Aspen/Volare were not an improvement over the Duster/Darts).
The salesman probably thought I was nuts for wanting the imported car. In the 1970s Columbus was a destination for young folks who came to Ohio State and stayed, and/or the big city where your uncle found a job and could get one for you — families who came up Route 23 to Columbus for work. Immortalized by Dwight Yoakam’s song “Reading’, Rightin’, Rt. 23.” My salesman probably had Kentucky roots.
So I picked a gold Dodge Colt 2-door Coupe with five-speed transmission, which had the 1600cc engine (not the silent shaft). It wasn’t a sweet handling car like a Civic would have been, but it was OK to drive. I bought an aftermarket FM radio and a cassette deck for it and rear speakers, probably at SUN TV or Swallen’s.
The mid 1970s were a time of decorating your car with vinyl: vinyl stripes, vinyl panels, vinyl tops. The Colt GT was the “hot” model, but the GT model was mostly decoration. And of course the Carousel was for the ladies.
But there was the issue of being $500 underwater and I wanted radial tires, which were not standard equipment on that particular Colt.
The Dodge dealer’s Finance Manager sent me to the Usurious Store Front Lender (City Loan, Household Finance, etc. — I forget which one), and they told me my debt to income ratios were too high, so no underwater loan for me. When I told this to the salesman, he exclaimed: “Who is going to pay for those radial tires we’ve put on it?” Then the Finance Manager called the manager at the Usurious Store Front Lender and I was suddenly “approved.”
The Colt was serviceable, no mechanical breakdowns, and gas mileage was OK. It didn’t start to rust while I had it, and Mitsubishi engines had great low speed torque, but…
The outside mirror came off when I ran it through automated car washes. Also, if I took a corner too quickly, the gas ran out of the carburetor chamber, and I had to prime it with starter fluid — in 1976 taking the air cleaner off was relatively simple; just one wing nut to turn and the assembly lifted off.
The winter of 1977 was vicious for snow and blizzard winds — living on the western fringes of Columbus where the prairie winds usually stop — one night I had to leave the car in a field as the apartment complex parking lot hadn’t been plowed yet. In opening the door the hinge broke from the wind, but was fixed under warranty.
And at -25° F it would not start, but my dad’s 1972 Oldsmobile would. My work friend Ralph actually bought me a plug in dipstick heater, a la Minnesota.
Don Sherman of Car and Driver wrote a review in 1976, and of course, Car and Driver always reviewed the top of the line model with all of the bells and whistles. Still, I think the review gave a fair assessment:
“The Colt offers the standard American buyer the same things that make Japanese cameras, electronic equipment and motorcycles so hard to resist: artful design, loads of standard features, high quality and affordable price. For the super-discriminating car freak, however, the Colt will provide some serious disappointments. You might, for example, hope the optional GT edition would offer an improvement over baseline agility, but it’s not the case. GT in the Colt means a tachometer, five-speed and 70-series radials, but nothing else more useful than trim and paint stripes. So when you challenge passages with road-course potential, the Colt delivers a strong reminder that it’s really much better as a highway car. The steering is too slow to manage the heavy understeer that sets in, and the carburetor starves for fuel in cornering to rob you of the simple pleasure of entrance-ramp gymnastics. (The 1600 Colt uses a 16-percent faster steering gear, and though it will bolt right into the two-liter car, effort is increased proportionately.)
The weakest link in the Colt driver’s chain of command is the rear suspension. Apparently some money has been saved here to pay for the silent shafts, because the rear axle can wind up the two-leaf rear springs like rubber bands. When you try anything so rude as a dragstrip start, the rear wheels threaten to tramp out from under the car, and there’s a good deal of unnecessary shuffling back there even during ordinary hard cornering. The front suspension is not without problems, either; the tires in front seem to hunt for longitudinal pavement grooves or any irregularity that will lead them off a straight-ahead path. The GT’s suspension is the obvious candidate for next year’s upgrade program.
With the Japanese record of fine-tuning the Colt, you can practically bank on a quick response to the car’s handling problems. Fast-advancing technology is one bargain that Chrysler gets in dealing with their Mitsubishi friends. When Detroit goes out to buy a car it can’t justify building itself, you can be sure they know where to shop.”
In 1974, the Colts had four speeds, by 1976 the fifth overdrive gear was added.
I took it in for service one evening at Northland Dodge thinking I would be out of there by 8 p.m. (I wanted to watch Chinatown that evening on TV –after 50 years, I still don’t think I have ever watched Chinatown.) They started working on the car about 9 p.m. You only get one chance to make a first impression…
Related CC reading:
CC Colt Chronicles Part 2: 1974-1977 Dodge Colt (Mitsubishi Galant) – The Colt Gets Americanized
Curbside Classics: 1974 & 1975 Dodge Colt – Two Colts Still Galloping
Sounds very familiar – in 1976 I bought my first new car – a Mitsubishi/Plymouth Arrow – from a Chrysler/Plymouth dealer on West Broad St whose name now escapes me. The write up is here…
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-1976-plymouth-arrow-hitting-the-bullseye-dead-center/
If I’m not mistaken, it was made and sold in South Africa as the Dodge GT 1600, with the same Mitsubishi engine.
I don’t know if any South Africans can confirm this, but it was very similar to the one in the photo.
My grandmother transitioned from a ’65 327/250 powerglide Malibu, into a ’75 Dodge Colt, same color as the lead picture. Her biggest complaint about it, was that it didn’t “get up and go” like the Chevelle, LOL!! 🙂 But it served her well as her final car, and had no issues.)
My beloved uncle got a 1984 Colt Vista from a Plymouth dealer in mid-80s and loves it very much. He drove it above 200k miles with regular maintenance, that was a great experience for him over years with Vega, Malibu and Ford first generation of Granada sedan. It was his first Japanese made car, he wanted to have a Honda and Toyota too, but Colt Vista 7 seating capacity was among many reasons to get that vehicle. The point is over years Mitsubishi has made progress in its vehicles until in last ten years, it starts drifting away despite it had a China engine market under its arm.
One of these coupes (in red) has arrived in our neighborhood recently, hunkered down in a carport. I’ve been meaning to get a few shots of it. haven’t seen one in quite a while.
I’d forgotten that this series of Colt was still available with the 1600 engine; I assumed they all had the larger 2.0.
Oh your articles always bring back fond memories of growing up in Worthington! My dad was a builder there, built several commercial buildings as well as nice homes.
Northland mall was the happening place as a kid!
My sister drove a Colt for awhile and really liked it. I only ever drove the newer ones with the twin stick. I thought they were decent cars and not at Toyota/Honda prices.
Rather nice-looking cars as a coupe, the Don Sherman quote is spot-on. It could be describing any Japanese car from the era, very attractive to the average consumer (and largely non-rusting in Australia), but pretty godawful to the motorist type. Vague steering, masses of understeer, fairly crapulous rear axle locating, hopeless rebound damping, thin, bony seats, and big wind noise. A dead-ordinary French car of the same time, like, say, a Renault 12, had the opposite of ALL these characteristics. However, it was also ugly, had heavy (but direct) steering, wasn’t reliable, and rusted as badly as the Jap alternatives: no wonder their super-equipped, light-to-drive, dead reliable cars like this Galant prevailed.
That was always a problem with Mitsubishi. They were “almost” in just about every category.
I vaguely remember a Dodge Colt Moms bought new, it had the twin stick thing, a worthless sales gimmick IMO as it was pretty slow no matter what .
Didn’t handle for spit either but seemed well screwed together and I don’t remember her ever complaining about it .
I liked and still like many 1970’s vehicles .
-Nate
I thought “adjusted market value” started with the 76-77 Honda Accord, but that may have been because my parents were shopping for an Accord and not a Corolla. I’ve always know about Colts, but the only one in the family was was my sister’s car in the early 90s that i saw but never rode in