The Daihatsu Consorte is a 2-door sedan (car) / sedan (1969–1977) / 2-door coupé (1973–1977) / 4-door sedan (1973–1974) from Daihatsu, built from 1969 to 1977, in the decade that gave the world the pony car and the mid-engined supercar. Under the bonnet: 958 cc List of Daihatsu engines#FE.
The story
The Daihatsu Consorte is a subcompact car sold by the Japanese automaker Daihatsu from 1969 to 1977. It was based on the Toyota Publica, and its name, meaning "consort" in Italian, reflected Daihatsu's newly established affiliation with Toyota while also continuing the theme started with the preceding Compagno ("companion"). The Consorte was a badge engineering of P30 Toyota Publica and was sold at the Toyota Corolla Store (previously called Toyota Publica Store until 1966 when the E10 Toyota Corolla appeared), a dealership network intended to exclusively sell small cars.
This arrangement allowed Toyota to sell the Publica at recently acquired Daihatsu dealerships, giving Daihatsu a new regular car larger than kei class cars. Unlike the Toyota Publica which was offered as 2-door sedan, 2-door pickup truck and 3-door wagon/van, the Consorte was only available as a 2-door sedan. The Consorte used a Daihatsu's in-house 1.0 L "FE" engine from the Compagno (while the Publica is powered by Toyota's 0.8–1.1 L engines) and mated to a 4-speed manual transmission.
What is underneath
Power comes from 958 cc List of Daihatsu engines#FE; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 670-745 kg. It shifts through a 4-speed manual transmission / manual Toyota K transmission#K40 / K40 / 5-speed manual Toyota K transmission#K50/K51 / K50 / 2-speed automatic transmission / automatic Toyota A tran. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 2160 mm (2-door sedan) / 2265 mm (coupé/4-door-sedan). These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Daihatsu Compagno; its successor was the Daihatsu Charade (2-door sedan/coupé) / Daihatsu Charmant (4-door sedan); assembly was at Ikeda, Osaka, Japan. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Range Rover Range Rover, the American Motors Corporation AMC Gremlin, the Peugeot 504 — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Daihatsu catalogue sit the Daihatsu Applause and the Daihatsu Atrai.
What it costs now
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Daihatsu Consorte has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.