One could forgive a first-gen. Dodge Lancer (Colt) for suffering from some form of identity crisis. According to Wikipedia, at least ten monikers were used to sell the model all over the world. And when as a child I saw this generation of the Lancer sold as a Dodge, I knew that something was askew. No Dodge I knew would ever look like a Lancer. But lacking car magazines at 5 years old, and with Mitsubishi being an erratic player, it took me years to sort it all out.
Not that selling a model with different names is that unusual. Particularly when it comes to Mitsubishi, which followed the opposite of Toyota’s trajectory. The latter, carefully built model names with world recognition. Corolla, Yaris, Camry; all model names we’re familiar with. Meanwhile, in the case of Mitsubishi, Lancer is probably its better-known nameplate. Not thanks to Mitsubishi, who seems to have pushed the nameplate only after car-folk became aware of the Lancer EVO through video games and the web (at least, that’s my theory).
So what we have here is an early 1973-76 Mitsubishi Lancer A70, sold in Central America as the Dodge Lancer. A model that in its native Japan was a replacement of sorts for its defunct Colt 1200.
Now, let’s not confuse the Colt 1200 with the Colts sold in the US. Mitsu’s original Colt was one of the company’s first passenger vehicles sold in Japan (1965 Colt above). After a run from 1960-70, the compact’s nameplate was dropped when the larger Colt Galant arrived in 1969. The Galant, was the Colt that arrived stateside in 1971.
Then, for some reason, no immediate replacement for the original Colt arrived until the Lancer appeared in 1973. The odd lapsus was likely the result of Mitsubishi’s operations being consolidated throughout the ’60s.
As for the Lancer itself, Mitsubishi’s engineers were as good as any in Japan. The model was a well-put-together, well-engineered, well-assembled, and long-lasting product. It used the classic rear-wheel drive layout, with a rather standard chassis; McPhersons up front, and leaf-sprung live axle in the back. Two engine families were found under the hood; in the early days either a 1.2L Neptune 4G or a 1.4 the Saturn 4G. As the years accrued, further displacements appeared, covering a range from 1.1L to 2.0L.
The Lancer’s hottest version was the 160o GSR, powered by Mitsu’s 1.6 4G mill. It provided 108bhp and made for a lively performance. Steering was light and responsive, and the front disc brakes provided non-fade stopping. Handling, when pushed, was as good as any small rear-wheel drive Japanese car. Meaning, it could be fun for whoever was pushing the car hard.
The whole setup may sound mundane, but the Lancer has quite a reputation as a rally machine. In Japanese sites, the model is credited for starting Mitsu’s “Golden Rally Era,” winning the Safari Rally of 1974 and claiming all three top positions in 1976.
For the car’s category, the interior was generally well-appointed. If a tad generic. About which…
Mitsubishi’s engineers may have been as good as any. But their management and marketing was a different matter, along with their stylists. Looks wise, the Lancer was an inoffensive and anodyne model. Quite the generic Japanese-looking car. I remember seeing these on El Salvador’s roads as a child and wondering, somewhat annoyed: Who exactly builds that?
And well, Mitsu never quite created much of a styling language. It wasn’t easy to associate these with the later Mirages, Eclipses and whatever else that eventually made up the company’s output.
US spec Dodge Colt, in San Salvador.
In late 1977, a slightly updated version of the Lancer arrived in the States as the Dodge Colt. Not to be confused with the better-known Dodge Colt/Plymouth Champ, AKA Mitsubishi Mirage, also sold stateside starting in 1978.
And don’t worry too much if you can’t quite follow it all. Tracking Colts is a hard thing to do.
No one has been able to explain why Mitsubishi and Chrysler waited so long to sell the no-longer fresh Lancer in the US. As far as I’ve seen, the ‘Lancer’ Colt doesn’t even appear in Dodge brochures of the period. Such an obscure placing probably didn’t please Mitsubishi. Or not. It’s impossible to tell.
But in retrospect, Mitsubishi’s and Chrysler’s marriage of convenience appears to have been rather inconvenient throughout most of its history.
If we recap, Mitsubishi was quite glad with itself when it partnered with Chrysler in 1971. The trouble was, there were unspoken interests in that alliance from the get-go.
Alliances work best when the involved players grasp the pecking order in the relationship, or have some form of respect for each other. None of which seems to have lasted long or existed at all in the case of Mitsu and Chrysler.
Mitsu saw the partnership as a way to leapfrog Toyota and Datsun. Skip the hard work, access Chrysler’s dealer network, and use it as a springboard to take over the world. Sort of like the new recruit in the gang, just waiting to take over the whole operation.
Meanwhile, what Chrysler wanted was… Actually, I can’t fathom what it wanted. Other than trying to be a worldwide player like GM and Ford.
But well, it got a purveyor of reliable compacts just when it needed it. And also, did Chrysler ever back away from getting involved with brands to mismanage?
Talking about mismanaged brands, while Dodge got the Lancer, Plymouth got the Lancer Celeste. For once, Plymouth came out on top. The model was a coupé hatchback version of the Lancer, and rather sharp-looking. It sold as the Plymouth Arrow and introduced US drivers to balance shafts. Proof that Mitsu’s engineers were nothing to scoff at.
Back to our find. These Lancers were not necessarily common in Central America, but not rare either. They certainly got quite a few customers back in the ’70s. Mitsubishi clearly got a few nickels from the locals. What they didn’t get was any recognition. It took years before anyone over here knew what a Mitsubishi was.
The grille nostrils are the kind of fuzzy detailing common to Japanese cars of this period. Luckily, there aren’t many such flourishes to ruin the car overall. Of course, the rest is rather plain and somewhat generic.
But wait, what’s that badge on the hood of this Lancer?
What’s this Colt badge doing over here? Is this a Lancer or a Colt? How hard are those Colt genes to shake off?
I had been looking for one of these Lancers for a long time, hoping to find the right one to post here at CC. I didn’t want a clean pristine example (there aren’t any), but I also didn’t want the monstrosities most of these have become.
Instead, I wished to encounter one that at least resembled what it once was. With a good amount of wear too. A Curbside Classic, in other words.
So, I finally found it on this gray one, and now I feel that my mission is done.
I have been talking about how generic these were and how muddled its branding was. But regardless of these cars being Dodge-Chrysler-Plymouth-Lancer-Valiant-Colt-Arrows (And there’s more!), the truth is that I remember the model clearly from my childhood. So forgettable, it wasn’t at all.
Further reading:
CC Colt Chronicles Part 3: 1978 Dodge Colt (Mitsubishi Lancer) – The Little Colt
My assumption about the Colt name is that Mitsubishi intended it to be a brand name, like Datsun or Toyopet, rather than a single model name.
The rationale for Mitsubishi’s alliance with Chrysler is discussed in Toyota’s 75th anniversary history documents: https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/text/entering_the_automotive_business/chapter1/section2/item3.html
Basically, it was about trying to get ahead of a push for liberalization of foreign capital investment in Japanese automakers. I’m sure that Chrysler also saw it as a relatively low-investment way to get some subcompact cars to sell — which ended up being the main actual result — but I think they originally thought of it as getting in on the ground floor for an expected boom of American investment in Japanese industry.
Mitsubishi had a real thing for equine and stellar names. And sometimes the two were co-mingled, as in the Starion, which featured a stallion in its tv ad, raising the question as to whether its name really was Engrish for “Stallion”.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-asian/curbside-classic-1984-mitsubishi-starion-or-is-it-stallion-did-i-finally-solve-the-mystery-of-its-name/
Does that explain why they originally marketed the Starion as the Scallion featuring a stallion in a field of green onions?
I didn’t mean the origins of the name, but why Mitsubishi applied it to several distinctly different models in the ’60s and early ’70s: I think they intended it to be their automotive brand name, akin to Datsun and Toyopet. Given the complexity of Mitsubishi’s corporate structure, that wouldn’t be a big surprise: Mitsubishi Motors as such wasn’t formed until around 1970.
Mitsubishi Colt 1100F were in NZ in 68 and actually these Lancers were ok to drive lots started their lives in rental fleets where the one I hired came from Much better driver on the road than Corollas and small Datsuns, they were rallied with some success.
While the B-210 was the obvious ugly duckling of mid-’70s Japanese small cars, the Colt, RX-4, and Corolla were attractive designs for the era. Though, all of them were plagued with well-dated early ’70s long hood, short deck proportions. I liked their styling in this order, as well. As a kid, I found the Corolla’s styling too generic, and the RX-4 too serious. I liked the softer, friendly lines of the Colt. I actually considered these cute, at the time. Though behind the B-210 and Corolla in popularity in Canada, I always enjoyed those rare Colt spottings. Feelings carried through with the new for 1979 Colt.
I like the patina on these El Salvadorian classics. Nary a clean, smooth body panel, lots of nicks and scars, resprayed bodies, and improvised bumpers, grilles, etc., but loads of character to show for their decades of service.
Dodge never used the “Lancer” name on these, it was either the “Colt Mileage Maker” or just Colt sedan and coupe (2-door sedan) during its’ short run.
In 1977 it was offered alongside the Galant-based wagon and hardtop, and in 1978 those were replaced by a Sigma-based Colt wagon and the Galant Lambda-based Dodge Challenger/Plymouth Sapporo. For ’79 the Mirage-based Colt hatchback (and Plymouth Champ) was sold alongside the old Lancer-based cars for one year only.
Maybe it didn’t come across clearly in the text, but the only place these were sold as Dodge Lancers was in Central America.
Curiously, the May 1977 R&T review of the model referred to it as Dodge Colt Lancer. But I see no other use of such designation in the US elsewhere.
The front end is the answer to the question “Did the Ford Maverick and Pinto front end styling have any influence on car designers globally?”.
Gen of Colt before the model presented here was more connected aesthetically speaking with the North American Chrysler products such as the ’71 Plymouth Satellite Sebring 2 Door Hardtop.
That’s a second generation 1973-76 Mitsubishi Galant. A size bigger.
They used the Galant name for other larger models in some markets, but not for NA as the photo (and my memory) shows. Lots of confusing rebadging at Chrysler for theirs imports & Mitsu at that time. We will not add the transition to the Fwd Colt ’79 model to mix even more cause in some market the Rwd was still there in ’79.
Being a student I was too poor to buy a used Corolla, so in 1982 I bought a used Colt ’78, a gray two-door. no small ventilation window in the front…obligatory in South America ? Filling a pint of oil every week cause the fault of the 1.6 was drinking oil through the valve seals which a compression test did not reveal .Apart from that , without inner plastic fender the front fenders rusted very quickly for our Canadian winters….woop i think i put the diapo in the wrong facing cause it’s wasn’t a Rhd.
I think if you used a pint of oil a week, you’d be bleaching a large amount of smoke behind you in South America or Canada.
It only produced white smoke when it started. Compression was good, oil only lost & burn through the valve stems.
You are correct: it was not a fogging machine, it was one liter per month
Direct Film! A Canadian shopping mall staple of the early and mid 1980s.
Oily film?
Since I never tuned to english tv at that time I saw this one instead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiXsNDKKtHY&ab_channel=hifichet
That is awesome. Pretty sure, I saw that commercial broadcast on TV stations in Hull, Quebec. When I visited Ottawa at the time.
I remember these cars, and they were nice, attractive rides. I used to believe that Mitsubishi would be a lot more successful than other Japanese brands, but they lost their way.
What surprises me is that Dodge didn’t use the name “Lancer”. IIRC, didn’t Dodge actually have a model by that name in the fifties? Strange. They had no qualms about using the “Charger” name on the aforementioned Mitsubishi Starion, IIRC… It’s possible that I don’t recall correctly. This was a confusing time for Mopar’s model names.
“ It’s possible that I don’t recall correctly ”
You are thinking of the 1978-1983 Challenger, which was a Mitsubishi Galant Λ (Lambda), the precursor to the Starion. The Cordoba-twin generation of Charger was still in production when this Challenger was introduced.
Dodge had a Lancer in the ’50s and again in 1960–62, when the name was applied to the Dodge version of the first-generation Valiant.
Mitsubishi’s sixties model naming made for a real headache, didn’t it? As well as that conservative-looking Clot (sorry, Colt) sedan (which I don’t think I ever saw outside Readers Digest ads), there was also this smaller 800/1000cc Colt fastback, rather uncommon here as Aussie motorists didn’t seem to know what to make of it. The Galant was initially called Mitsubishi Colt Galant before Chrysler came to the rescue (they thought) and made it Chrysler Galant.
Down here this feature car was the Mitsubishi Lancer, later Chrysler Lancer. No Colty shenanigans here, 🙂 Don’t think I ever saw the front quarter vents, though a great addition for your climate.
A mates mother had an identical 1100F it was a good car and weaned her away from BMC cars.
These are very familiar in my neck of the woods and many are still around in similar condition to the featured car, still running around without much complaint. The lancer was considered to be a better performance package than the Sunny or Corolla here, and many were raced or rallied, with success.
There was also a wagon version, which was also popular.
What Chrysler wanted seems quite clear. Their British products like the Avenger were not up to scratch. The Plymouth Cricket was a failure. The French products were too foreign. The big three were all importing Japanese vehicles. For Chrysler Mitsubishi products gave them a way to compete not only with Pinto and Vega but also Toyota and Datsun which were ascending in the U.S. In 1979 there were more Mitsubishi Plymouth models in the lineup than American Plymouths. Mitsubishi based Chrysler products were successful enough to last as badge engineered cars into the mid nineties and long after as common platform products. Early K car and K platform derivatives had optional Mitsubishi power. Overall a successful run on my book with some real highlights like the Colt Turbo and the Diamond Star coupes.