2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse Rs Hatchback 2-door 2.4l on 2040-cars

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Mitsubishi dealers would really like a truck to sell

While Mitsubishi is switching gears to focus on crossovers, that won't address a market that its dealers would like to be in. While answering questions from the press last night, Don Swearingen, executive vice president and COO of Mitsubishi's North American office, mentioned that its US dealers have a pickup truck high on their "shopping lists." In fact, he said that a truck is pretty much at the top. Mitsubishi does already have a small pickup truck it sells in foreign markets, badged as the Triton or L200. However, Swearingen said that just because dealers want a truck doesn't mean it's going to happen, citing various obstacles to bringing one to market. If, for example, Mitsubishi brought over the Triton, the company would have to go through the long, expensive process of certifying it for US safety and emissions regulations, not to mention making sure it fulfilled American buyers' demands. There's also the Chicken Tax, which levees a steep tariff on trucks built outside of the US and imported in. One possible way Mitsubishi could circumvent all of those issues, though, would be to leverage its new partnership with Nissan. Nissan already sells Frontier small pickups in the US, and Mitsubishi could simply redesign that model to suit its style. It's something that both companies are familiar with as well. Mitsubishi previously sold a restyled Dodge Dakota as the Raider, and Nissan allowed Suzuki to rebrand the Frontier to be sold as the Equator for a short time. It would certainly be a quick way to get into the truck market. However, Mitsubishi would also need to decide if such a product would actually be profitable, in addition to satisfying dealers. Related Video:

Junkyard Gem: 1986 Dodge Ram 50

After years of selling the Isuzu Faster with Chevrolet LUV badges here, GM replaced it with the S-10 in 1982. Ford sold Mazda Proceeds with Courier badges for even more years, but ditched the Courier once the Ranger became available as a 1983 model. Chrysler was able to put truck beds on Omnirizons at that time, but didn't have the deep pockets to develop its own rear-wheel-drive small pickup; for this reason, Dodge-badged Mitsubishi Forte pickups continued to be available in the United States all the way through the 1994 model year. Here's one of those trucks, found in a Colorado car graveyard. The first Chrysler-imported Mitsubishi Fortes showed up in the United States as 1979 models. The Dodge-badged version was known as the D-50, while Plymouth dealers got theirs with Arrow badges. The Dodge D-50 became the Ram 50 for the 1981 model year, while the final Plymouth Arrow trucks were sold as 1982 models. Just to make things more interesting, Mitsubishi started selling its own vehicles in the United States beginning with the 1983 model year. That meant that the Ram 50 had to compete for sales with a near-identical twin sporting Mitsubishi badges. Things in the Chrysler-Mitsubishi universe got even more exciting a bit later, when there were four marques selling essentially the same car here simultaneously: the Mitsubishi Mirage, Plymouth Colt, Dodge Colt and Eagle Summit. All of the Dodge D-50s and Ram 50s came with Mitsubishi power under their hoods. This one has a 2.0-liter SOHC straight-four rated at 88 horsepower and 108 pound-feet. For a while, a 2.3-liter Mitsubishi diesel was available in the Ram 50. It had been discontinued by 1986, however. This one has the base five-speed manual transmission. It appears that this truck was being used for long-term storage of many, many boxes of random household stuff when it was banished to this place. Much of the stuff was scattered on the ground nearby. Perhaps it was parked at a rent-a-storage facility and got evicted for lack of rent payments. Much of the contents consisted of stacks of newspapers and magazines from the 1960s and 1970s. Here's an Art Buchwald column about then-Vice President Spiro Agnew from February 23, 1971. Here's a Beetle Bailey strip from the same year. There's plenty of history in the junkyard, if you know where to look. There must have been a half-ton of paper in this truck when it arrived here. Sadly, some family's photo albums were here as well.

Scrapyard Gem: 2007 Mitsubishi Colt CZ2 5-door hatchback

YORK, England — Remember the Dodge and Plymouth Colts of 1971 through 1994? The Colt name stayed alive after that on Mitsubishis sold elsewhere in the world, and I've found a 21st-century example in a self-service wrecking yard near York, England. This generation of Colt served as the basis for the Smart ForFour, so (as promised) I'm following up a ForFour Junkyard Gem with this article about its sibling in the same knacker's yard. Like the ForFour, this car was built at the NedCar assembly plant in the Netherlands. Mitsubishi began using the Colt name in Japan back in 1962, then killed the name at home in favor of the Mirage when that car debuted in 1978. Export-market Mirages got Colt (or Champ, or Lancer and many others) badging at that point. For 2002, the Colt returned to Japan with a brand-new platform, and that's the generation we have here. The engine here is a 1.5-liter Mercedes-Benz turbodiesel, rated at 95 horsepower and 155 pound-feet. A 148-horse turbocharged gasoline-burning Mitsubishi 1.5 was available in the UK as well. The transmission is a five-speed manual. A six-speed automatic was an option. It's a small car but not microscopic; its wheelbase is just over 98" and its curb weight is about 2,500 pounds. The tall roof gives it great storage capacity, a trick often seen in kei vans. This generation of Colt continues to be sold in Taiwan through the present day, as the Colt Plus. In Europe, an all-new Colt based on the Renault Clio was launched last year. It was cheap. In Japan, cuteness was played up in Colt commercials.