Junkyard Find: 1976 Dodge Colt
We’ve seen plenty of front– wheel– drive Colts in this series, but (prior to today) the only example of the rear-wheel drive Dodge-badged Mitsubishi Colt Galant we’d seen was this lichen-covered ’72 wagon. On a recent trip to California, I spotted this coastal-rusty example of tape-striped Malaise Mitsubishi glory.
Obviously, this car sat outdoors and neglected for decades.
The severity of the top-down rust indicates that it lived near the ocean, or maybe under a leaky tarp in a shaded Bay Area yard.
Someone took the cylinder head off and said “To hell with it.”
Still, you can always find something useful on a car like this. The instrument cluster would be useful for a Colt restorer.
Ah, Malaise.
Hemi engine!
This appears to be the same car, down to the blue tape stripes. Look, adjustable steering column!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Yikes, cant believe the rust on that thing! I tend to think of rebadging a car as a fairly recent thing (like late 80's) - but I guess its been going on longer than that.
Arthur and Roger: Good call on the old TV shows. Was in the UK last summer and caught a few episodes of The Sweeney. Love watching the old shows for the cars. I am just impressed anyone found one of these old Colts in the junkyard. Most went there 30 years ago.