I had just spent four years in automotive daily-driver-almost-nirvana with my 1966 Plymouth Fury III. Those years, 1987-91 were four of my most satisfying years of automotive ownership. But you noticed that I said “almost-nirvana”, which is not the same thing as actual nirvana. The Fury fell short in a couple of areas. By the spring of 1991 it was up to about 60k on the odometer, so I knew that the almost repair-free existence I had experienced could not go on forever. I was also tired of the high-maintenance white paint that, being forced to live outdoors, could start looking pretty grungy if it did not get regular waxings. And then there was the big one – no air conditioning.
The Colt was a “car of opportunity” that came into my life through family. In a kind of full circle, it had been Marianne’s first new car. She had finished college in 1980 and was moving into adulthood with a good job at a life insurance company and her own apartment. One last hurdle to real adulthood was the car.
Marianne had grown up in a family of VWs. Not new VWs, but older VWs. Which would be expected given that her father ran a VW repair business. Marianne had several hand-me-down VWs in her early driving and college years, and the last was a dark green ’68 fastback. Marianne is nothing if not thrifty, and made that fastback last a good long while, but it was finally time for her to make a choice in cars that was all her own.
She wanted something fun and inexpensive, and the answer seemed to be found at Tom O’Brien Chrysler-Plymouth in the form of an blue Colt sedan. She was used to shifting gears, so the Twin Stick transmission was perfect. She was convinced that it would be less expensive to buy a non-a/c car and have the dealer retrofit air. Perhaps it was just more profitable for the dealer. In any case, with the dealer-installed air conditioning, the little blue Colt would be even perfecter, and she bought it for a figure she recalls as about $6,000. This was, by the way, the first year that it was called a “Plymouth Colt”. The year before, the same car had been the “Plymouth Champ”, but it was the same little Mitsubishi something-or-other that was conveniently offered at nearby Palmer Dodge as the Dodge Colt.
The Colt was a good, reliable car for her and she drove it for 5 years. But about that time, she started having some shoulder problems and thought that getting rid of the stick shift might help. We have already told the story of the Colt’s replacement – a new (also blue) 1988 Accord LX, that was a far more luxurious car. But what to do with the little Colt? Enter her brother Bill.
Sharp-eyed readers will note that the car had somehow come to have two matching blue wheels on the passenger side but two matching silver wheels on the driver’s side. As long as I only saw one color of wheel at a time it didn’t bother me.
Marianne is the oldest of five, and Bill was next in line, two years younger. He was also getting on with an adult life and bought a new Civic wagon not too long after Marianne got the Colt. Bill has always been one to take care of his things, and when his sister was going to get another car, it occurred to him that he should buy it from her. The Colt would be his commuter special that would allow him to spare his Civic from the wear and tear of his daily drives to and from downtown. A deal was made and the Colt moved to a new owner, but one with the same last name. Bill used the Colt for work and also allowed it to be used as the family-wide temporary spare car. But after about three years, he decided that he didn’t really need it and told Marianne that he was going to sell it. She, in turn, shared that bit of information with me.
Once I thought about it for a few minutes, the Colt seemed to be a perfect replacement for my ’66 Plymouth. The little blue Colt was now 8 years old, had about 60k miles on it, and was in great condition. Which was, of course, more or less like almost every car I had ever owned. It also had functioning air conditioning, so my days of driving to court on hot afternoons with a wet dress shirt pressed to my back were over. And it was spring, so my new car fever could be salved again.
By this time the household fleet included the Thunderless Bird and the Model A, so there was no need for my daily commuting car to double as a hobby car. A plain vanilla econobox would be just the thing to take care of business while other cars supplied the fun (or aggravation).
The Colt needed tires, so a deal was struck with that expense in mind. After buying the car plus a set of new tires, I may have had about about $1600 in it, I no longer remember. What I do remember was what a hoot it was to drive.
It was really, really different from the big Fury. As they say, it’s fun to drive a slow car fast, and the Colt was great for that. It was good to be back into a daily driver with three pedals, and I was lapping it up. The Twin Stick was a new variation on that experience. The big lever was a normal 4-speed manual. The second, smaller lever offered a choice between “power” and “economy”. In actuality, it was a basic 4 speed transmission mated to a 2-speed axle. For awhile, each trip began with “Hmm, do I want power or economy?” But soon the solution appeared. Each time the car got underway, the “power” setting was the play. The car was so much more sprightly with the lower gearing, and thus more fun. And if I reached a speed where the car felt like it needed another gear (which was about any speed over 40 mph) – well, guess what, I had one right there with a shift into “economy”. So that was it. Each stop light saw the big lever go to 1st and the little lever go to Power, then row through the four gears and shift the second lever to “economy” for “5th”. Rinse and repeat.
Actually, the car even seemed more fun than the VW GTI I had bought new just a few years earlier. Of course, the GTI would have creamed the Colt on twisty mountain roads and was certainly more powerful, but the featherweight Colt felt more nimble, with a tossability about it that could make me giggle like a little kid, even if the car objectively lacked the GTI’s bona fides.
Thirty plus miles per gallon in spirited driving was a fun respite from life with the Fury – it had not gotten terrible mileage, but 14 mpg around town was on the high end of its normal. If I ever got under 30 mpg with this one it was only with great effort. Really, this Colt was almost like driving for free.
It was also the continuance of the theory of family car ownership that I kind of backed into when I got married – going forward there would be a “good car” and a “second car” that would look decent and be reliable. By nature, I like older and simpler cars, so everyone was happy – Marianne would get the good car most days and I would only take it on days when I needed to drive some distance or where I needed to meet clients. And when it was necessary to load bags of mulch or such, nobody was going to stress over the Colt getting a little dirty or picking up a scratch.
I remember that Colt with great fondness. Every morning I looked forward to driving it to the office, and every evening I looked forward to driving it home. When I needed to run an errand on a weekend, the Colt was almost always my first choice. The Accord was far more comfortable (and had better air conditioning). However, where the Accord suffered from that horrid condition called 4 cylinders and an automatic transmission, the little Colt was both engaging and fun. It reminded me more than a little of my years-ago time with the 6 cylinder 3 speed Mustang.
The Colt and Accord made a perfect combo of daily drivers when an Imperial came to augment the Thunderturd and the Model A. The two blue dailies were both as drama and stress-free as any pair of cars could have been. The only real repair I could recall doing was after I noticed the shifter trying to escape through the floor. Something that connected the shifter mechanism to the floor of the car had failed, so I periodically needed to yank the assembly upwards into place, where it would stay until bumps and vibrations sent it slinking back down again. For work I don’t do myself I usually gravitate towards independent shops, but some jobs call for a dealer. I figured (in those pre-internet days) that this must be a common problem as these cars aged, so back it went to the selling dealer for the repair. I recall that the shift action felt a bit sloppier than it had been before the repair, but otherwise the little Colt was ready to kick up its heels again.
I looked forward to several more years of economical fun, but it was not to be. At the end of my second summer with the car, we had plans to drive to Fort Wayne for Labor Day weekend, which was always a Three-fer for us. We could visit my mother, we could visit my dad at his lake place and we (actually I) could spend time at the classic car auction that was part of the annual Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg festival weekend. I planned to leave work a little early on Friday and we would take the Honda up north.
It was a beautiful, sunny Friday morning as I drove to work. The drive from home to office was scenic and relaxing. The weather was comfortable and my window was down. About six blocks from my house saw me on a 4 lane residential boulevard. A city bus was slowing for a bus stop in the curb lane and I was going past it in the inside lane. That was when I saw the black Ford Tempo. Its driver, at a stop sign on the side street to my right, saw the bus stopping and saw his break in traffic to start his left turn to go in the direction opposite me. He saw the bus but did not see that I was behind the bus – until it was too late. I was going maybe 30 or 35 and there was nothing to do but stand on the brake pedal as I t-boned the black Tempo.
I will never, ever forget the strong embrace of the three-point seat belts which arrested my otherwise-certain meeting with the steering wheel and windshield. My first thought was “what a great day to not be driving the Model A or the Thunderbird, neither of which had any seat belts at all. I had actually considered driving one of the beltless Fords because I was in an old-car-mood that morning. But had decided against both of them because taking the Colt (which was parked out front at the curb) was less effort than getting one of the others out of the garage.
The police were called, reports were taken, and I was driven home in what has been my only ride in the back seat of a police car. Jitters from a lack of coffee was my only injury but my little Colt was not so fortunate and went away on the back of a flatbed. The other driver was at fault and his insurance company pronounced the Colt totaled. I did not disagree with them, because it was a pretty hard hit of the right front corner of a FWD car. An old, cheap FWD car. Marianne did not cry about this one, which had originally been chosen more out of budget constraints than about what she really wanted.
In the early 1990’s, older subcompact cars were not valuable items and I had to fight like crazy to get a reasonable payment from the insurer. That is the downside of driving a really nice older car – all of the insurance value guides give prices for “average” cars. They do not give prices for the exceptional ones. It took a small claims suit to get them to an amount anywhere close to my car’s value, but we got there and that was that.
The postscript to the Colt story was that I got a rental while I looked for a replacement. My rental was a fairly new Toyota Camry sedan, much like the one shown here. It was a great chance to do a one-to-one comparison with the ’88 Accord that I had found so humdrum. It was during my couple of weeks with that Camry that a switch was flipped and my preferences became clear – between Honda and Toyota, I would henceforth be a Honda Guy. The Camry was nice and all, but it lacked the personality, the style and the driving dynamics of the Honda. I didn’t expect the Camry to be as fun as the Colt. But it was not even as fun as our Honda. I still considered our Honda as a dull appliance, but my dullness meter was recalibrated after time with the Camry. I remember looking at the dash and interior of the Camry as I was parked at the curb in front of my house one morning, thinking that it was the Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera of Japanese cars. From that moment forward I never again thought of the Accord as a snoozer. Had I the opportunity to re- compare them at 15 years in the salty climate and 150k+ miles my switch might have flipped the other way, but we will never know.
Soon enough the rented Camry was replaced with my next set of cheap wheels. Those cheap wheels would not be as fun as the Colt – but then few cars could be. It would also not be as trouble-free as the Accord. But that next car would be a lot more interesting than the Camry.
I loved reading about your experience with a feisty Mitsubishi Colt. Mitsubishi made far more interesting cars than most Japanese car manufacturers (excluding Honda) in the late 70s and early to mid-1980s. Some ideas worked, and some didn’t.
Agreed – Mitsubishi’s trajectory since then has been really disappointing.
Mitsubishi never seemed to truly recover from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, and that seems to have been were it all unraveled. Mitsubishi was relatively shielded from the effects of the collapse of the Japanese asset price bubble in 1991 because their product portfolio back home in the early 1990’s was exactly what buyers were shifting towards and included some smash successes that were printing money (Diamanté, Pajaro). Problem was, Mitsubishi had invested heavily into growth in Southeast Asia, and when that market went into crisis in 1997 the potential to recoup returns essentially evaporated overnight, leaving Mitsubishi with a mountain of debt and no recourse. Meaningful product development seems to have suffered greatly from that point on; I can’t think of any particular standout product Mitsubishi has come up with moving on from this juncture, and what successes have occurred are minor in scale (treading water, essentially).
Neat little car. I think that the 4 door hatch back is one of the most useful body styles and on a very small car like this can make the car seem larger than it is. We have that on a Honda Fit right now, and I very much like the utility it offers. My Fit is also a “car of opportunity”…that’s a great term.
That Twin Stick transmission sounds interesting. It seems that setup also offered two reverse speeds? That’s wild. Did you ever find the need for “power” reverse?
Looking forward to the next chapter…”a lot more interesting than the Camry” does open the door rather wide to possibility. 🙂
Yes, the Twin Stick gave you two different reverse gears. “Economy” reverse required a little more attention to clutch technique, but I never really paid too much attention.
At the time I had wished it was a 2 door because the 4 doors looked a little off to my eye. A brother-in-law described it as “it’s all doors”. But I agree that the 4 door hatch may be the must useful of all bodies.
Part of what looked “off” may have been familiarity. The 3-door model had been sold in the US from 1979-84, the 5-door didn’t join the line until midyear ’82, so the 3-door had a huge head start of more than half the design cycle.
Man, this is one of those cars that has simply disappeared from public roadways. When was the last time you saw one? Too bad about its end, but that “Twin Stick” setup looks neat. It’s kind of like an old Rambler.
Agreed – these didn’t sell in the numbers they should have, and so were never that common. I have not seen one in ages.
I don’t know where to look up the numbers, but as I was watching a Cadillac commercial today, I said to myself, “When’s the last time you saw a late model Cadillac on the road?” They seem to have really thinned out to my eyes. I’m not even sure who their target market customer would be any more.
“ As they say, it’s fun to drive a slow car fast… ”
I no longer say this out loud because most of the people I know do not see its meaning. But one of Debbie’s neighbors (Nick), who owns a Turbo-Porsche 911, a 6-speed Audi S4, and a Nissan Leaf does seem to be grasping the meaning in an interesting manner.
Nick’s Porsche only comes out on sunny dry days and while I often hear him rumbling away for a Sunday drive. I know his best moments may be limited to the entry ramps onto I-78 West or I-287 North where a two or three second burst of power in first and maybe second immediately puts him over the speed limit.
He asked me about Miatas in general and which models were good as used cars and I sent him some write-ups and mentioned that there are a lot of Miatas used as second or third cars with low miles that would be good and inexpensive options. He seems to like how I drive the little Mazda in the rain, use it as a daily grocery-getter, and I suspect he also hears me running up the gears [hopefully smoothly] as I leave the neighborhood – all within the speed limit.
So I hear you when you say how much fun the Champ (I mean Colt) was to drive.
T-Bone
Some guardian angel was riding with you that day because the Champ (I mean Mitsubishi something-or-other) is very small. A Ford Tempo is no SUV but you could easily have suffer serious injuries. I had installed lap belts in my mother-in-law’s wedding gift 1959 Galaxie 500 just before I T-Boned a meat truck back in the mid “60s. Like you I will never, ever forget that split second experience.
Nor will I ever fail to belt up before driving.
“But that next car would be a lot more interesting than the Camry…”
There’s a car that more interesting than a Camry?
I think hitting a car broadside was probably the best kind of collision I could have had in a tiny car like the Colt. A head on or an offset with a car coming towards me would have been miles worse – even with seat belts. I grew up buckling up in front (our 64 Cutlass never had belts in the rear) and still feel naked without a seat belt.
What, the hint of “more interesting than a Camry” doesn’t narrow it down enough? 🙂
Years and long years ago, back in the beforetimes when the internet had not yet begun to evolve the necessities of crawling out of the soup and onto dry land, we had a thing called Usenet. It was a topically-categorised sort of proto-board; every topic had one or more of its own “newsgroups”, and text-only posts were made and read by subscribers to a group, much like the email of that time.
One such group was rec.autos.driving, and one day I saw a post from someone who said they were having trouble with a driving-simulator videogame: they felt constantly uncomfortable playing it, because no seatbelt. I suggested they start wearing suspenders, and a couple days later they posted back saying they’d tried it and it worked perfectly.
Back after your primordial soup days, but before Al Gore invented the internet, I was using a world-wide Ethernet network called DECnet and we had a vast library of Notes files for instant communications on many different topics, for work, for fun, for solving problems using the combined knowledge of all DEC people world wide.
Well, mostly for fun.
But if I had a real tech problem, I’d go to the appropriate Notes file and if the answer wasn’t already there, I could usually get an answer just by asking.
No store and forward, instant communications (but global time differences often created a delay on its own).
A sample DECnet node and note address was “KDX200::DISK$KDX200_USER2:[NOTES$LIBRARY]MUSCLECARS.NOTE;1
Each note and reply was numbered NOTE 75.26 and then under that was the user’s Node::User (NY01::PLAUT)
oh it’s him again, that Plaut guy in the main NY office who just came to DEC from the IBM MVS world and knows nothing about VMS. What a no-op !
All uppercase, and no photos; naturally. And dumb terminals.
And yes, I read the Musclecars notes file; I was a lot younger then.
How fun! I think we’ve got a time sync issue, tho; Usenet’s heyday was the mid-1990s.
I remember the Usenet. rec.autos and rec.autos.tech were my favorite sandboxes.
Mr. Stern, I thought Usenet was so much older; I guess I was the one in the primordial soup. DECnet was already up and running when I joined DEC in 1987.
I was blown away when they showed me how to use it.
Although I looked this up when doing my COAL chapter on DEC, I forgot most of the timing details.
From Wikipedia: “Originally released in 1975 in order to connect two PDP-11 minicomputers, it evolved into one of the first peer-to-peer network architectures, thus transforming DEC into a networking powerhouse in the 1980s. Initially built with three layers, it later (1982) evolved into a seven-layer OSI-compliant networking protocol. “
Thank you for the time/synch correction.
Usenet went live in 1980, Wikipedia tells me. When I say “heyday”, I mean sort of the fat/sweet spot when a critical mass of people had access, but it hadn’t yet been swamped with spam and garbage. The first waves of that swamping came when AOL and WebTV opened gates to Usenet.
JPC, there are times I wish Google hadn’t bought; burned, and buried the (former) DejaNews Usenet archive. And then there are times I am very pleased they did. Your comment here spurs the latter reaction, because oh boy would I be embarrassed if my youthful blather were easily accessed!
Daniel, mine too! I don’t know why, but I remember a guy who went by Walt K who was a rabid fan of the old Dodge Cummins trucks, and a guy whose name I don’t recall who rode the cycle on a Mitsu Diamante, from a pure infatuation through purchase through a horrible case of lemonhood. I think this would have been maybe 1992-93 or so? It was a great time-suck. Kind of like CC.
The Thunderbird I presume would have been a much a harder hit than the Colt and caused significantly more damage. Hope the driver of the Tempo also thanked you for choosing to take the Colt that morning.
I can relate to having a daily driver that makes me smile every time I get in… and a couple that didn’t.
A buddy and I replaced the clutch in one of these Champ / Colts for one of his neighbors. It was a surprisingly easy job that we did outside in the driveway. I remember thinking the transmission seemed about as big as a basketball and weighed maybe three basketballs. (I’m joking about the weight, but it really was light and easy to lift back into position.) Unfortunately, I had to leave before the test drive, so I didn’t get to experience any Twin Stick l goodness. My friend reported that everything went well.
A cousin of mine bought one of these new – also in blue with the Twin Stick, but a two-door. I had never seen one prior to that and was greatly intrigued with it. For an econobox it seemed to have a bit more zest about it than did its competitors.
That was a sad end for a fun car. Glad you were okay.
Oh, and this reminded me of a VW story Marianne told that time you were at our house. I shan’t say it as it would be better coming from you.
Oh, there are so many of those VW stories. 🙂
Yes, but for that crash I would have enjoyed this one for quite awhile.
Mom bought a pair of these new in two door format, I drove hers when visiting and it was nice but I didn’t find it powerful enough .
Sorry to hear it was taken from you too soon , insurance companies are a bitch .
I’m struggling with Farmers (“Mid Century Insurance Co.”) now, I think it’s my agent not the company .
-Nate
Your mention of insurance woes reminds me of the quip that insurance is the product that covers everything when you buy it but nothing when you make a claim. The truth is somewhere in the middle. The problem is that you don’t know what your claim will be when you are buying and its too late to buy when you know about your claim.
I’m just trying to insure my vehicles are properly referenced as Ins. Companies are notorious for finding little details then using that to refuse claims .
Plus the boob assistant canceled the insurance on one of my vehicles and didn’t bother telling me .
-Nate
Ohgawd, yeah, that’s my absolute favourite: “You have to understand, Mr. Stern, your car is old.” “Uh-huh. You have to understand, Mr. Insurance, it’s exactly the same car you knowingly wrote and sold me a policy for.”
I can certainly relate, as my xB is very much in the same vein: it’s always fun to drive. That’s why I can’t give it up. My biggest concern is that it ends up like yours; if it did, I’d hunt me down another.
That generation of Camry was probably the most different from the Accord. I’ve driven them (and written it up here at CC); it reminded me very much of a Mercedes (W124/201): solid as a tank, and very comfortable, but certainly not sporty in any overt way. But the Accord became more like the Camry as time went on, and the Camry eventually became more like the Accord. Not quite the same, but as the Accord got bigger, heavier, it lost some of the qualities that endeared it to its owners back then. In fact, the generation Accord you had was generally considered the most overtly sporty of them all.
These Colts were terrific. I loved their design and they were a ball to drive.
“These Colts were terrific. I loved their design and they were a ball to drive.”
Yes, thank goodness Marianne picked it out – there were SO many worse choices.
As for the Camry vs. Accord thing, a lot of my impression probably had to do with my recent experience with an Accord and a Colt. If I had gotten the Camry after the 66 Fury, it would probably have impressed me in an entirely different way. More than once I have thought that I would like to drive one of those Camrys again just to get a second impression.
Camry lost the manual transmission in 2012 model year, while Accord kept the manual until 2021 model year. The pattern is repeating with the regular (non-GR) Corolla losing the manual in 2023, while the Civic still has the manual transmission available (or even mandatory) in several models.
I can also relate. the big engine 04 Focus sedan is a hell of a lot of fun to drive especially corners. Conversely I drive the 91 626 more sedately as while it’s handling is behind the time it’s ride and economy are great. I try to deal the Focus sedately and do, only in stop and go freeway traffic. Yet when getting on the freeway, from Monument, as I see the coast is clear then Yeehaw let’s hit it and in no time 90 mph. Can’t give that up.
I completely understand how you were underwhelmed by the Camry. A few years ago I went looking for a replacement for my 09 Crown Victoria ex-police car. I wanted something fun and economical and looked long and hard for a Ford Fiesta, having owned one in the 80s. I quickly discovered that the newest Fiestas were a bit too tiny for me to climb in and out of and the “B” pillar would always block my line of sight with the driver’s seat pushed to its rearmost position.
The dealership had a 2014 Toyota Avalon Hybrid that I took for a test drive and I was amazed at the fuel economy I got (40 mpg in city driving). But I realized that I wasn’t having fun driving that Avalon once I got past the fuel economy readings on the dash. The steering was disconnected feeling, as were the brakes, and unlike my plain jane Crown Victoria, there were buttons arrayed everywhere for all sorts of adjustments….not my type of fun car.
I, too, experienced the secret joys of owning one of these little adult play toys. It was a yellow ’81 Champ 2 door twin-stick “loaded” with factory A/C, & an AM/FM radio for goodness sake. It had a For Sale sign on it about two blocks from our house, & I paid a middle-aged neighbor around 1500 bucks for priviledge of ownership. I believe it had 50K-ish on the clock. This would have been around 1988, & my daily driver was a ’70 Olds Cutlass. It would become my German wife’s grocery getter, she who thought automatic trannies were “too complicated”, so either gear range was fine with her. But, after experiencing the 8 speed capability, & go-cart tossability of this solid tin can, I found plenty of excuses to get the groceries myself. It also became my daughter’s training wheels, & the car in which she got her license at 16. A parallel parker’s dream. I would have kept it ’til the present day, except a couple things started to become “iffy” at the 90K range. I think the “sport” range became unaccessible for an unknown reason, & one other more ominous failure thing reared its head on occasion, but I’ve forgotten what that was. So, pointing out the failure possibilities to a co-worker, who accepted the possible consequences, I tearfully accepted her 500 bucks. She wanted an economical (gas) thing for a short daily commute. So, later wifey accepted the purchase, also from a neighbor, of an ’88 Plymouth Voyager, albeit with one o’ them new-fangled auto-matics. Daughter retained the love of rowing gears, so her off-to-college car was an ’82 Scirocco. After a few subsequent selfie-shifters, she now drives a Ford Fusion Hybrid with one of those non-stick trannies. But, sadly we all become grown-ups. She’s now 49, so I’ll excuse her. For a time after selling the Champ, I casually searched the classifieds (found in those quaint things called Newspapers) for a Colt turbo that was rumored to shut down any Corvette, but alas, no doubt after excessive abuse, they’d all become denizens of an early boneyard visit. But, today I still get my shift jollies from an ’01 Miata. (Only 6 speed, not 8). I’m 81 years of age, so when I grow up, maybe I can inherit my daughter’s Ford.
Ronald ;
You can’t avoid getting older but there’s nothing forcing you to grow up =8-) .
-Nate
This was a fun and great read. It always makes me sad to read about an older, non-collectible car in exceptional condition that meets an inglorious end. (To a Ford Tempo, no less.)
Mitsubishis of this era, or even starting with the Arrow / Celeste of the ’70s, had / have exceptionally clean styling with a few, minor exceptions. Thie Colt / Champ exemplifies this. This was a great-looking small car in the idiom of the Volkswagen Rabbit without looking the least bit derivative.
A friend had an 84 Colt in matching blue to the featured car. Must have gotten 145000 miles out of it before next-door ran into a front fender. Just a ding. Writing off due to the high cost of a replacement fender. Twice the cost of a Fiesta one. It was brought back from the insurance company for a few hundred and lived on until the MOT inspection tester saw day light through the floor..
Another friend brought a 88 Dodge Colt in Canada. Dam thing dumped oil out the main seal in less than 60000 kms. Yep the MK 1 was the best.
Thanks Joe – I agree that these were really good looking little cars, with styling that was clean and nicely balanced.
Bought new a 1986 Dodge Colt 2-dr hatch, similar color to your blue. Bought it in Philly for my daily 40 mile commute on I-95. Peppy light weight ride, economical. Put the miles on fast with back & forth to NYC and the mountains or Jersey shore, leaving my less used Eldo parked. With the rear seat down lots of room for two cats and small dog.
Unfortunately, lost my little blue Colt on a morning drive to work on I-95 going North away from Philly. I was in the inside lane, next to guardrail on my left separating oncoming traffic, cars in front & back of me doing about 60 mph. Center lane to my right was the 18-wheeler I was passing. I was 1/2 way passing the trailer when I saw it tilt in my direction.. No time to break (thankfully) as the 3-way belt allowed me to lean right. If I had hit the break, belt would of tightened preventing me from leaning to to the right, thus losing my head. Trailer landed on my roof at speed pinning, my little Colt between the guardrail and trailer on top of me. Must have messed up South bound commuter traffic towards Philly that morning. Thankfully,, don’t remember anything after leaning right. As I heard they had to cut the guardrail to cut off my door, and the Colts roof had peeled back to the hatch.
Lost my little 2-door hatch Colt that day but it was never designed to be a convertible. It took awhile to put my head back together, but damn I looked 7-years younger without the use of Bondo.
Wow, that sounds like a nasty accident indeed! Glad you made it out of that one.
I had one of those, an ’80 2 door. Fun little car. Bought it cheap, not running from a brother in law, didn’t really need it, but I’d always been intrigued by the “twin shift” and it was fun. Unfortunately it was the small 1400, not the 1600, let alone the turbo which I would loved to have had. Turned out it needed a timing belt, but non interference so no big deal. I did have to put valve guide seals on around 120K as it was smoking. They literally had come off and were not even on the guide anymore. I’d call reliability as fair overall.
But the twin stick. The engine did have a good torque curve for what it was and felt faster than it was. I could maximize acceleration by starting in 1 low, upshifting to 2 low, next pull the other lever back to 2 high, then pushing both levers at the same time I would go to 3 low. After that 3 high, 4 low and 4 high all felt the same, just a slightly different noise level.
Great idea was the ” Twin Stick” as you could pick n mix gears to suit your driving needs. Must have been deleted on later models due to production costs perhaps.
A long-ago colleague, who drove a Mazda Cosmo (the bigger late ‘70’s version that was quite Brougham-esque) replaced it with a new Twin Stick Colt. He was working on the technique of shifting both levers simultaneously with one hand; not sure he ever managed to make it work. I drive it once and it felt bigger and softer than my own Mk1 Fiesta, but still lots of fun. I like your comparison between your GTI and the Colt, JIm; I felt the same way when I test drove the new GTI … it was faster and stiffer than the 2nd gen Civic I had at the time, but also bigger, heavier, and less sporty. In hindsight, the Civic and Colt were pretty equal to each other, vs the Fiesta.
I have never driven the original Fiesta – anything that would make a Colt feel big and soft would be a real experience! 🙂
Did you ever split each gear and drive it as an 8 speed? That would have been entertaining to me a few times lol.
I’m sure I did, but there was no point. 1st low and 1st high were so close together that it would almost have felt like a downshift, not an upshift. 2nd definitely, 3rd yes, although as mentioned 3rd high and 4th high and low were all almost interchangeable. I suppose 4H was a little quieter, but performance in the top 3 was all about the same. While fun to play with, splitting 2nd and 3rd, it to me functioned more like a 5 speed. 1L-2L-2H-3L-and the other 3.
I don’t recall that I ever did – they did not design those levers to make that sort of thing easy, so shifts that used 2 levers at once would be either slow or would require two hands.
I view a manual like that the way I view modern automatics – 4 gears isn’t enough, 5 or 6 is about right and over 6 gets you little besides complexity for its own sake.
My aunt had an 82 Colt, from the Dodge store in Kalamazoo. “Sport” package, the “big” 1.6 and the twin stick.
I drove the Colt for a week or so, as my Renault’s Marchal alternator decided to act as if Joseph Lucas and it were brothers from different mothers.
I pulled off of 131 at 44th St in Grand Rapids. When the traffic cleared, I dropped the clutch, and the engine stalled. Spun up the engine, and tried to get going again. Engine stalled again. Then I noticed the “economy” LED glowing on the instrument cluster. Doh! Shifted into “power” gear, and the Colt took off like a scalded cat.
The early 80s Colts had a record of eating their clutches. That also befell my aunt’s. In the back of my mind has always been the thought, was the clutch that weak, or were people trying to trundle around town with it always in “economy” mode, slipping the clutch like crazy every time they pulled away from a light?
A few years ago, Richard Bennett found a quite nice early 80s Colt for sale in Kalamazoo. Low trim, with only the 4 speed and vinyl upholstery, but very clean for it’s age.
I’ll bet you are right that too much driving in “economy” would lead to clutch problems for those with a less-than-stellar technique (which probably included most of the buying public back then, at least for that kind of car).
This was a fun read; too bad the car’s end came sooner than expected. But most important, you were uninjured.
I always wondered about the shifting technique for the Twin Stick, and it sounds like your solution was the best: Power for the first 4 gears, then economy for an effective 5th gear.
Well there’s another one I didn’t know about, you are full of automotive surprises JP. My father had the generation of Colt that came after yours (1985-ish) and it too was a fun little bomb around town.
I never did get to drive a twin stick version but I did ride a Honda CB900 that had a low/high range lever in addition to the standard gear lever. Since we were on a long distance trip I just left it in high…
I’m surprised you still had the Thundering Bird at this point, maybe you need to do one of those line diagrams that Wikipedia does for rock bands that have many members come and go. Then we’ll know what was where & when.
I have been going in order of acquisition, so I can see how the time-line could be confusing. I had that stupid Thunderbird for 5 or 6 years. The hobby cars (Bird, Model A and Imperial) followed a LIFO (last in first out) plan between1988 and 1994. I think we have to get through the next 2 chapters before the last of those was gone.
I don’t recall any difficulty starting out in 1H, but the clutch was toast when I bought it at 100K. But for a cheap car in those days I’m not sure that was out of the ordinary.
I recall test driving a pre-Colt Champ with a friend, who ultimately bought a VW Scirocco. I really liked the car, but couldn’t argue with his choice of the Scirocco. I was surprised to see we were in the same automotive family for a time as we had the car at the top of list in the ad you posted–a Reliant wagon. I don’t imagine the two cars shared a single part… That was a sad end to the Colt, but any accident without injuries had a positive ending.
“I was surprised to see we were in the same automotive family”
And you also probably never thought of yourself as owning the flagship of the line. 🙂