Turbocharged Rarity: 1987 Plymouth Colt Turbo

The concept of captive imports is a business strategy that many of Detroit’s automakers employed beginning in the 1970s, but Chrysler seemed to been the dominant force among the Big 3 in importing Japanese products to America. Some of the more interesting collaborations involved performance cars that were completely unexpected at the time, like this rare turbocharged 1987 Dodge Colt listed here on craigslist. These were fun hot hatches that offered an alternative to the likes of the VW GTi and Honda Civic Si, and today, they are mostly extinct. Thanks to Barn Finds reader Tony Primo for the find.

There’s an era of automotive design that we’re sadly never going back to, and that’s the exaggerated use of performance language on otherwise humble vehicles. Take, for example, a four-cylinder, turbocharged Ford Mustang: Ford isn’t selling that car with “Turbo” script going down the doors and a large I4 badge on the fenders. However, in the 1980s,  turbocharging was the flavor of the month (or perhaps decade?) and it was a big deal – especially for humble brands like Mitsubishi trying to make a name for itself. And, after all, this Plymouth Colt is a Mitsubishi underneath.

And the turbo hype didn’t stop on the outside: Mitsubishi ensured you knew it was a turbocharged hot hatch every time you stared at the steering wheel. When you look back at the marketing for this model, however, it seems like Plymouth downplayed the impressive performance for this second iteration. There was plenty of emphasis on the Japanese reliability angle, which always struck me as funny when being sold alongside vehicles developed and built in the United States, along with the general sophistication of the model. The first generation and third generation turbo hatches, however, were much more in-your-face about 0-50 times.

Under the hood is Mitsubishi’s 4G32 engine which produced just over 100 horsepower. Not exactly awe-inspiring, no, but you still have to acknowledge that even offering a performance-oriented model was an achievement. There cannot be many of these turbocharged Colts left in existence, and based sheerly on casual observations of what comes up for sale and appears in car-spotting threads on social media, the second-generation model is seen the least. The seller of this turbo Colt notes it just passed California’s tricky smog test and he’s asking $1,700.