Mitsubishi Colt

The Mitsubishi Colt is one of the Mitsubishi entries the open record knows by name and by date — in 1962, and by little else. That is not nothing: a name in the catalogue is where a car's story starts to be recoverable.

The background

The Mitsubishi Colt is a nameplate from Mitsubishi Motors that has been applied to a number of automobiles since 1962. It was first introduced with a series of subcompact cars in the 1960s, and then for the export version of the subcompact Mirage between 1978 and 2002. Chrysler, Mitsubishi's longtime partner, also used the name when applying its long-running practice of rebadging Mitsubishi vehicles as the Dodge and Plymouth Colt captive imports for the North American market between 1970 and 1994.

The most recent version was a subcompact car model manufactured between 2002 and 2013, sold under the Colt nameplate internationally. Mitsubishi replaced this series in 2013 with a newer generation which reverted to the Mirage name. In addition to these small cars, "Colt" in the Mitsubishi vernacular has been used for unrelated vehicles of various forms as discussed below. The name has also been disaffiliated from Mitsubishi as an independent marque in some markets.

Where it sits

Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Alfa Romeo Giulia, the Ferrari 250 GTO, the Aston Martin DB5 — show what else the money bought that year. Its Mitsubishi stablemates include the Mitsubishi Lancer and the Mitsubishi 360.

What it costs now

There is no federal ownership record for the Mitsubishi Colt — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.