I’m not going to sit here and wax nostalgic about how awesome the Dodge/Plymouth Colt was because few people have fond memories of early 90s domestic econoboxes, but this was no domestic. The Plymouth Colt was a rebadge Mitsubishi Mirage, which I do have fond memories of tossing through corners and slamming through the gears […]
Every car that meets the necessary prerequisites to be featured on Daily Turismo is an interesting car…but sometimes they are cars that I don’t want to own. This next car fits into that category of the rare stuff that could find a home in my garage…and trust me, my garage is a strange place. It current extends into the public street and involves several Buick station wagons that I didn’t seek, but they came to me — anyway, if I were to add to my collection of vintage fun cars, something with a Chevy 350 V8 and headers and styling like this would be top of the list. Find this 1980 Manta Mirage offered for $12000 in Ventura, CA via craigslist.
The Dodge Colt was an imported Mitsubishi Mirage with a Dodge emblem and is either an interesting cheap classic if you never had to rely on one for daily driving use or a total pile of garbage if you needed drive one for many miles a day. The little pony is covered in TURBO stickers, but the “twin-stick” (it is a 4-speed gearbox with a 2-speed transfer case controlled by that dainty lever to the left of the stick) is either a neat trick to entertain your passengers or just something else to break…depending on how you feel about this kinda thing. Find this 1984 Dodge Colt GTS offered for $3950 in Elk Grove, CA via craigslist. Tip from Jason.
There are only a handful of cars out there that’ll make a Porsche 356 look “large” in a photo, but a Manta Mirage is one of them. Never heard of it? Yeah, you are certainly in the majority of people, but don’t fret, because here at DT we are obsessed with everything Manta and will post each one that we find. Why? Because they are all questionably built kit cars with styling based on a McLaren race car and are almost all powered by big V8s and hit the scales around 1900 lbs. The Mirage is as close as you’ll come to racing a 70s Can-Am car for the street, do I need to say any more? Find this 1970ish Manta Mirage offered for $21,000 in Morgan Hill, CA via craigslist.
This next car is an interesting pile of semi-built parts. It is a kit car that was born in 1980, but has been sitting in storage for the past 40 years. Perhaps the next owner will finish the dirty work and turn it into the pavement pounding beast that it should be…or let it sit […]
The Dodge Colt (technically an imported Mitsubishi Mirage with a Dodge emblem) is either a cool/interesting cheap classic if you never had to rely on one for daily driving use or a total pile of garbage if you needed drive one for many miles back in the day. Personally I have no idea if the […]
If you’ve always wanted to build a 70s kit car, the opportunities are limited these days. It isn’t just that lawyers and politicians want you to be safe, but also that most of the businesses making kits are long gone, so you’ll need to find an unfinished project, like this 1974 Manta Mirage offered for […]
The Chevrolet Monza was released for the 1975 model year on a chassis shared with the tiny Vega, but it was designed to have power from an exotic rotary GM-Wankel engine. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the rotary was scrapped after GM engineers couldn’t figure out that wankels are total piles of junk, so GM shoved a […]
The 3rd generation Mitsubishi Mirage was sold in North America starting in the 1989 model year at Mitsubishi dealers, but you could also get the same exact car (albeit with different badges) from Dodge/Plymouth dealers as the Colt, and over at Eagle as the Summit. They should have imported the top of the line JDM […]
The Manta Mirage was a crazy Can-Am inspired mid-engined road car built out of a garage in Costa Mesa by brothers Brad and Tim LoVette in the late 1970s. The basic recipe was a steel space frame with a Chevy V8 mounted in the middle connected to a Corvair transaxle, all wrapped up in a […]