At first glance, a Colt 1400 appears typical of a small Japanese car of the late 1970s and early 1980s, down to the quasi-American styling. But that is before you notice its two gear levers, giving the driver a choice of no fewer than eight forward ratios. Today, Richard Green’s 1980 GLX is believed to be the sole example still on the road.
Compared with other Japanese brands, Mitsubishi arrived late to the British market. Sales under the Colt brand started in November 1974, six years after Datsun and nine years after Toyota. The front-wheel-drive A150 family debuted in 1978, with UK imports commencing in March 1979. Colt GB initially offered only the 1400 GLX flagship. The price of Green’s GLX in October 1980 was £3,990 – compared with £4,458 for the Ford Fiesta Mk1 1.3 Ghia or £3,936 for the Volkswagen Polo GLS.
According to the importer, such a price tag represented “value for money that no other car can match”. After all, who would not be impressed by the 1400’s radio, tinted glass and “remote control hatchback release”? Plus, of course, there was the “Super Shift” transmission with the second lever labelled “Power” and “Economy”.
The Super Shift provided two sets of ratios for the four-speed gearbox. One was for “low fuel consumption [and] fuel efficient motoring,” and “the other for maximum acceleration and performance”. The driver could change between these settings by depressing the clutch and moving the second lever.
A few cynics muttered the word “gimmick”, but the owner could boast of more gears than a Grand Prix car of the day. At that time, the 1400’s British rivals all had four-speed gearboxes. TV presenter Tony Bastable pointed out on Thames Television’s Wheels that while the Super Shift was, “a common enough device on lorries”, this was “the first time we have come across it on a car”.
This newspaper described the Colt’s transversely mounted 1,410cc overhead camshaft engine as modelled on “the best European designs” and said, “technically, it is a remarkable car”. What Car? complained about its refinement, and the complications of the two-lever transmission. But Autocar was more impressed, finding the gearbox “an advance in small car design”. After a long-term 12,000 mile test, their reviewer found it hard to fault the GLX “on any score”.
Mitsubishi facelifted the A150 in 1982, a year before the second-generation version replaced it. Sales of the 1400 in the UK were always limited due to the voluntary restriction agreement limiting Japanese imports to 11% of the new car market. The motoring historian Keith Adams notes that while Datsun and Toyota dominated this allocated market share, Honda, Subaru and Colt “were left to pick up the crumbs”.
As to his splendid GLX, Green remarks, “I cannot honestly say that I am a Colt enthusiast. I simply like cars and was in the motor trade from the late 1980s, working at main dealerships until jumping ship in the early 2000s. However, I have always admired ’70s and ’80s Japanese cars, and I bought a 1400 in 1991. It came into a VW garage as a part-exchange and I paid a couple of hundred quid for it.”
Sadly, that Colt was written off, but Green came across this example on the internet 20 years later. In his words: “I snapped up the 1400 for nostalgia’s sake and I initially ran it for a year. However, I needed something bigger, so ended up selling it to a Mitsubishi dealership in County Durham.” When the showroom changed hands four years ago, Green “jumped at the chance” to re-acquire the GLX.
Today, Green says that the Colt “really is a lovely thing and totally standard, other than slightly larger tyres that fill the arches better. It was pretty quirky when it was new and even more so now. As with my first one, this is the top-of-the-range model and is lots of fun to drive. It naturally receives a fair bit of attention at petrol stations; the typical reaction is, ‘My mum had one of these’.”
And who in 1980 could have resisted the allure of the eight-speed Super Shift and “nearly 50mpg at a steady 56mph”?
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