In 1976, working part-time and going into my junior year in college, I found myself with a little extra money. Up until then, I had owned only used cars; which I had purchased, respectively, for $500, $800, and $2800. Maybe it was time for a brand new car…
As I was driving by the Chrysler-Plymouth dealer one day I saw a very sharp-looking small compact car parked on the front line – fastback with GT stripes. I stopped by for a look. It was a Plymouth Arrow – a car I had not heard of before.
While I was aware of Chrysler’s earlier captive imports from the Rootes Group and Mitsubishi’s Dodge Colt, it never dawned on me that this Arrow might have its origins somewhere other than Belvidere Illinois. Not until I got to poking around it a little. Surveying the outside at the dealer, I noticed nice, even panel fit and high quality paint. Inside it was beautifully assembled, and all the switches had a firm, solid feel. The five-speed shifter was pure “snick-snick”. So I then popped the hood and immediately saw all the Japanese kanji symbols. A-Ha! I got it now…
Mitsubishi Lancer Celeste
Fortunately the salesman was a straight-shooter and knowledgeable of his product. He had quite a few brochures and even some marketing manuals that he shared that discussed Chrysler’s alliance with Mitsubishi and photos of the home market Lancer Celeste, the model the Arrow was based on. I was able to learn quite a bit about the car.
The other fortunate thing was that they weren’t that popular. The dealer had three or four on the lot and they’d been there awhile. I assume that was due to the limited marketing effort by Chrysler. I can remember they didn’t do much to push their Rootes Group imports either. So I was surprised when doing some research for this post I came across quite a few vintage advertisements on the web. I was a routine Sunday newspaper auto ads reader and subscribed to the major car magazines – and I never came across an ad for the Arrow. After I bought it, I do remember the TV spots with the Harry Nilsson song, “Me and My Arrow.” Irrespective, its lack of popularity worked in my favor – the sales manager was ready to deal, and as a result, I bought it right at invoice.
Fire Arrow from Internet
And it was just a great little car. Arrows in ’76 came in base 160, GS, and GT form, and with 1.6 or 2.0 litre SOHC inline fours – the 2.0 had the new balance shaft technology, marketed as “Silent-Shaft”. In 1979, the larger 2.6 litre balance-shafted four became available in the “Fire Arrow” model. Paul has an excellent post on it here. I knew a guy who had one of these – he said the 2.6 made the car quick but also front heavy, and it handled poorly compared to the smaller-engined models.
Arrow exactly like mine – from internet
Mine was the GT with the 1.6, in bright yellow. I was never a fan of yellow before but it looked right on this car, and contrasted nicely with the black GT stripes. The 1.6 wasn’t fast but it felt brisk with the 5-speed manual – curb weight was just a little over 2100 lbs. In three years I never had one problem with that car – you’d just get in, fire it up, and you were on your way. Like every other rear-drive Japanese car I drove during this era, it “thrummed” down the road – not an objectionable sound but unique. The Arrow left me with nothing but pleasant memories – quite the contrast to last week’s post.
Arrows were never big sellers; again I think Chrysler’s lack of marketing had something to do with that. Model year breakout for 1976 to 1980 was as follows;
1980 6.634
1979 21.829
1978 26.825
1977 47.345
1976 30.430
I would have kept the Arrow but as I mentioned in last week’s COAL, I was headed to upstate NY and while it could handle a dusting of snow, a New England winter would be a challenge. I traded it for a 1979 Subaru 4WD Wagon, which was great in the snow, but not near as much fun to drive.
Picture from Internet
We all know cars are inanimate objects, but we also sometimes ascribe personalities to them. The Arrow always reminded me of a playful puppy – eager to see you and ready to go anywhere.
I know that sounds strange, but that was my impression – and I recognize some of that may be colored by the fact it was my first brand-new car. But even though I’ve subsequently had vehicles that were larger, faster, more powerful, more luxurious, and/or more prestigious, the Arrow ranks up there as one of the most enjoyable and satisfying cars I’ve owned.
Additional posts:
Curbside Classics: 1977 Plymouth Arrow GS – Celeste Before the Fire
I don’t think many of these were still around in Michigan by the time I was a car spotter, but Arrows, Colts, and Celicas have “held up,” meaning that they still look good today. In yellow with black stripes, it does just look like a fun, happy car. No wonder you miss it.
The Mitsubishi cars were a lot better than many of the Chrysler offerings at the time, and it sounds like you really liked your Arrow. They weren’t common here in Ontario either, but you did see more of the other Mitsubishi captive imports around in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. My oldest sister bought a new Dodge Challenger in 1978 and kept it for several years. She was quite happy with it; more so than the Ford Tempo she bought later on.
Agree re: the goodness of the Mitsu cars sold by Chrysler. I used to do tune ups and other minor work to a friend’s 1977 Arrow with the 1.6 engine and she loved it. One of the reasons the Arrow sales went down in its last 2 years was the availability of the new Mitsu front drive cars, in this case the Plymouth Champ. I owned a ’79 Champ bought used in 1980 with the Twin Stick and 1.4 engine. Great fuel mileage and it was a blast to drive.
“Great fuel mileage and it was a blast to drive.” Agreed!
I have never figured out why Chrysler dropped “Champ” for the versions sold as Plymouths and started calling them “Colts” like the Dodges in 83. Did they really save that much money in badging? Over just the final two years of that generation? Mine confused everybody, because everyone kept correcting me and telling me it was a “Dodge Colt.” Had Mrs. JPC bought it a year or two sooner, they would have been right and it would have been a “Champ” just like yours.
“I have never figured out why Chrysler dropped “Champ” for the versions sold as Plymouths and started calling them “Colts” like the Dodges in 83.”
I bought a used ’81 Champ in ’83, and from the start I felt it was a cheesy name. For reasons I can’t articulate, it was a little embarrassing to be driving a tiny car called “Champ.” Colt was a good name, and everyone knew what it was. No one knew what a Plymouth Champ was.
The Plymouth Champ was the Ricky Schroder of cars of course!
I always thought of the movie back then.
Even more embarrassing!
I agree. I used to picture this as well when I saw them. 🙂
A vague memory of borrowing a coworker’s Arrow, for some long-forgotten reason. It was the first ever car I’d driven with 5 forward gears.
And I was on some 45mph road and the engine started to rev up high and I thought I’d better shift from 3rd to 4th, but I was already in 5th and you know what happens when you move the lever downward from 5th? Some very grunchy noises, that’s what!
The Arrow seemed none the worse for it and my coworker never said anything, so I assume there was no permanent damage.
Chrysler’s Mitsu stuff were in a tough spot – People went to a Chry-Ply dealer because they tended to be interested in a US car. These were not that, so most traditional Plymouth lookers were not really interested. I (sadly and wrongly) was in this place when these were new. People looking for a Japanese car were not likely to go to a ChryPly dealer to get one. So, you bought an Arrow at invoice.
Mrs JPC’s first new car was an 83 Plymouth Colt sedan with (I believe) that same 1.6 and the twin stick 4 speed. She sold it to her brother in 1988 and I/we bought it back from him in 91 when it became my daily runabout. It was a first rate little car that was fun to drive and I remember it quite fondly. In hindsight, Chrysler’s Mitsu offerings were so, so much better than the Pinto and the Chevette, and they should have sold much better than they did. And by 1978-79 the homegrown OmniRizon (including the TC-3 and 024) became the favorite child in those dealerships.
Agree. I went to check out an L-Body Dodge Charger 2.2 in 1981 – no intention to buy, just curious.
It was the exact opposite of the Arrow – the interior was full of the cheapest, hardest plastic I’d seen – and none of it lined up. The steering wheel also felt cheap. The manual stick felt like it wasn’t connected to anything below the console.
I wasn’t impressed.
Looks like a Renault R15 to me.
That’s an R17. The 15 had a full rear side window filling the space of both the 17’s side window and louvering. And was available with an automatic. The 17 was stick only.
What a joy to open CC in my browser this morning to find a COAL about one of my favorite small cars of the ’70s. So glad to read that your experience with yours was a great one, which seems to be the consensus from other firsthand accounts I’ve read.
Their styling was 95% on-point – maybe just a bit on the narrow side, but terrific looking cars. I was reading a little bit last year about Don Prudhomme’s Arrow funny car for an article I ultimately didn’t write.
Maybe I had first liked the Plymouth Arrow from all the times I went with one parent or another back to Chinonis Chrysler-Plymouth due to our ’77 Volare’s various issues. I remember feeling disappointed when the ’81 Reliant came out and basically borrowed the rear panel from these cars on an otherwise boring-looking design.
These were always sort of a “forgotten car”, i.e. didn’t get the respect or sales that they could have. Sure they were around, but not common at all even in SoCal where I was at the time. However when Mitsubishi started selling its own wares and released the Cordia which this presumably morphed into, then those were much more common (if not seen nearly as often as Celica, 200SX, and Prelude and now pretty much extinct),
Lots of different yellow cars in that era, it helped make for a fun sight on the roads, good to hear it did you well, Mr. B.
My first new car was a 1978 Arrow. Same burnt orange color as the one in the ad, but mine had a orange and white flaming arrow decal down each side. White interior, 4-speed. Fun to drive, really well put together.
When I first moved to San Diego in 1976, one of the friends we lived with bought a new a little Colt 2-door sedan; same basic car, but the sedan version. Same 1.6. Drove it a few times. Very much like a Corolla. She drove it for many years.
The Arrow was never a very common sight. It did seem more cramped inside than the sedan version. Maybe just the back seat.
It was likely due to the area but the me and my Arrow ads were all over the TV around here. The Arrow pickup was much more common though.
A woman I served in the Air Force with bought one of these as a new car. I want to say that hers had the 2.0 four but it could have been the 1.6; I do know that it had the five speed. She had no trouble at all with her Arrow and that convinced me to put it on my short list when I was ready to buy a new car to replace my 1973 Nova. I did drive a couple of them in my search but those cars came across as sort of a poor man’s Toyota and I gave it a pass. I ended up buying a VW Rabbit which I drove for seven plus years and 117k miles, with mostly routine maintenance.
Had forgotten how nice looking these were, and it seems that almost all of the various Mitsu captive imports were very good cars too. A friend had a Plymouth Champ, my only direct exposure to a Mopar/Mitsu, and had really good luck with it. It’d be fun to have any one of them, but like other similar vintage Japanese cars, just try to find one now!
Great choice. One of the best styled small cars of the late 70s. ‘Arrow’ was a great name for a sporty car. ‘The Arrows’ were one of the best Canadian New Wave bands.
The Silent Shaft term had double meaning. It was a “silent shaft” balance method to smooth the engine NVH and you also felt that you had just received the “silent shaft” when the rear shaft bearing seized and locked the engine up. I had two 2.6s that this happened to.and know of a couple of others.
Funny thing is that when you eliminated the Silent Shaft during engine rebuild, you couldn’t really tell the difference in NVH. It obviously looked better on paper than in practice.
It’s been mentioned before that there was a kit to eliminate the Silent Shaft mechanism on these during a rebuild and the reason was, as stated, there was little difference on engines not equipped with it. It turned to be more of a marketing gimmick than anything else.
That caveat aside, the Mitsu Plymouths fall into the same category as the NUMMI Nova and Mercury (Mazda) Tracer: they were sold at domestic dealerships so a lot of consumers didn’t know they were a cheap way to get Japanese engineering and quality.
As Jim Klein says “lots of yellow cars in that era”. Mine was a 1973 Datsun B210 hatchback in what I called “babyshit yellow”. It had stick shift and no options at all other than a radio. I kept it for 6 years and never had a problem with it. It sold me on Japanese cars… I finally traded it in on another Datsun – – a 1981 200SX with all the bells and whistles.
Remarkably, the non-“silent shaft” engine in presumably a lower compression version was used as the power plant of several models of the Bobcat brand skid-steer loader in the ’80’s and ’90’s. I believe it was rated at around 40 horsepower. It couldn’t be classed with the little Kubota diesels, but was perfectly satisfactory for farm use, for instance. The same kind of crossover that found the SAAB/Ford v4 engine in forklifts and irrigation pumps!
One of our young announcers at the small town radio station I worked at bought one of these new in 1976. He loved it of course, to my eyes the styling just didn’t come off as well as some other Japanese cars at the time.
I appraised an Arrow about three years ago. A one-owner GS bought by a woman who was quite young back in 1979. Today, her Arrow has a new paint job and continues to do her well as a daily driver in the small town where she lives.
My Grandmother bought one of these new in 1979, it was metallic blue like the picture above, with white interior. I was 2 years old when she bought it and I have a lot of memories of riding in it. She was very proud of her Arrow, it was the first brand new car she had ever purchased, and I’m sure it was a step up from the Vega she traded in. She had a letter that Chrysler had sent her, Signed by Lee Iacocca, (I’m sure it was just a stamp) Thanking her for purchasing a Chrysler product and having faith in them during their financial troubles, 1979 was the year of the big bailout.
The Arrow was a good car for her, she bought a new Plymouth Acclaim in 1990, but kept the Arrow for a second car. I don’t recall it ever needing anything other than maintenance items, but it did rust pretty badly, not holes, but just one big rust scab from the body line down. It was bad enough that she took it to Earl Schieb for a respray, all they did was take a grinder to the rust and paint the car a blue that was no where close to the original color, including bumpers and trim. My Grandpa was not happy, I remember he painted the bumpers with a can of silver spray paint, all Granny said was ” I should have told them to paint it red, I always wanted a red car.”
She kept both cars until she quit driving in 1999, the Acclaim went to my dad, my older brother got the Arrow. He drove it for awhile, but the front end needed rebuilt really bad, if I remember correctly the car only had about 60k, and ran like new, but there where no parts available, and it wasn’t safe to drive anymore, so he junked it. That was probably the last time I saw one, they weren’t very popular, that’s why there were no replacement parts.
A 76 GT was my first car after granddads hand me down 68 Ford Galaxie. Metallic blue with a white interior, 5-speed, dealer installed A/C.
Was a fun car for a high school kid. Lots of hi-jinks occurred involving that Arrow.
These look great with alloy wheels from a 280-ZX.
I had my share of weird problems with my Arrow. The shifter bushing was made of Bakelite. For the longest time, you could drive it through the gears and the shifter would slide left to right about 3 inches while in gear. Until one day it completely disintegrated and the shifter was useless. Drove it home late one night stuck in third gear.
Another time, the bracket for the clutch cable broke, rendering the clutch pedal useless. Had to call my dad too late one night saying the clutch feels weird, and I couldn’t shift without grinding the gears. He yelled “a clutch doesn’t just ‘go out’ all at once”! I think he felt bad after we figured out the problem. Weird side note, parts for the Arrow took like two weeks to get at the dealer. I remember picking up the bracket at the parts counter watching the Shuttle Challenger explosion on the waiting room TV.
An A/C relay failed, but idiot me just let the bare wires hang from the dash and joined them when I wanted A/C.
My brother and I got the Arrow up to over 110 MPH on the downside of the Sunshine Skyway bridge over Tampa Bay once. Too stupid to be scared…
Months later, racing my friend, we got stopped by a cop (who pulled us both over). The Arrow stalled as soon as I pushed in the clutch and overheated. Motor cooked. Paid an amateur mechanic to put in a used motor, but it never ran as well again.
Sold it off to a friend of a friend and heard later that the rear hatch flew off while driving down the road. Was probably around ‘86, so it was an old car by then.
My first new car was a 1976 Arrow, orange with a white stripe running front to back on the sides and across the hatch with GT on the front fenders.. It had the 2000cc (as in cubic centimeters, liters for engine sizes weren’t being used yet, as U.S. car engines were measured in cubic inches), Silent Shaft engine with the 5 speed stick. No AC, wasn’t available yet, and a non-stereo AM/FM radio. Drove it off the show room floor for $4100. Fun little car. Had it 7 years and put over 70,000 miles on it.
So I did a search for this while watching “the Point” by the awesome Harry Nilsson. The Chrysler Mitsus were some great great cars! A high school friend had a twin-stick FWD Colt, I later had a late 90’s trapezoidal Colt. Tough little cars, flingable, repairable, durable. I just have a tonof love for Mitsus.
Im from the Philippines…came to the US in 1966, growing up here i fast became a Mopar freak/gearhead…my parents thought i was becoming too “Americanized” so they sent me back home to ” Done Learn”…best thing that coulda happen! So when i graduated from HS in 1979, (My Dad had bought a brand new 1976 Arrow GT in Hemi Orange, 2 liter, 5 spd, white stripes). I was “deported” back home….left my 74 Charger SE with a 360 here in the States…spent 2 years for College back home and was able to come back… I done learned, LOL! When i went back I was “Joe V8″…nobody could talk me down from that platform…then my eyes were opened.. I used to subscribe to “no replacement for displacement” till I saw what they were doing to 4 bangers!!!! Man what a wakeup call!! Came back in 1981 and found out my Dad still had the Arrow. Got a job at Kragens and sold my Charger and got my Dads Arrow…Next thing you know, i rebuilt the motor, bored out to a 2.2, porting, polishing, balancing, blueprinting, radical cam, twin down carbs from a Canadian Arrow, ( im in California), lightened flywheel, fabricated a set of Mustang “Recaros” in the Arrow, etc, etc… Made me alot of money in that car… LOL…my license plate frame said “Not Mitsubishi, Mitsubitchin”, gained a healthy knowledge/respect of what power can from from a 4 cylinder…man…good times….can you imagine an arrow with a Talon/Eclipse motor with a turbo?? A buddy of mine at Kragens dumped a 340 in an Arrow….talk about a wild ride….. miss that car….sold it cause i became “growed up”, bought a house, got married, had kids…oh well….having fun with my 72 duster with a 408 stroker… ;-)… My only “con” of the Mitsu motors…strong as hell, but short lived…had to rebuild at around 100K only…spun the main bearings so it forced me to rebuild…ahhh…the single life…we got paid every Friday at Kragens…Saturday was buying parts day….