A captive import is a foreign-built vehicle that is sold by a domestic automaker through its own distribution system. One example from the 1980s is the subcompact Dodge/Plymouth Colt, which was built by Mitsubishi in Japan. Dodge, of course, went on to do the same thing with its Stealth sports car, essentially a rebadged version of the Mitsubishi 3000GT.
Back in 1986, Dodge ran magazine advertisements to promote the Colt. By that time, the model was in its fifth generation and was concurrently sold as the Mitsubishi Mirage. Dodge wasn’t shy about the fact that the car was built by Mitsubishi. In fact, that statement was proudly printed on the cover of sales brochures and included in the magazine ads.
The idea behind a captive import was the ability to fill a gap in a product lineup, and given the Japanese automakers’ prowess at building small, fuel-efficient cars, the subcompact class saw many captive imports. Domestic companies could, in turn, avoid high development/tooling costs, respond quickly to the market, and leverage global partnerships.
These days, the lines between domestics and imports are blurred. Toyota, for example, builds all of its Tundra pickups in Texas. Motor Trend stopped making a distinction for “Car of the Year” versus “Import Car of the Year” after the 1999 model year for some of these same reasons.
MotorWeek has an entertaining and educational six-minute intro to the Colt if you’re so inclined!
As for the basic nuts and bolts: Base models came with a miserly 1.5-liter, 68-horsepower inline-four, but an optional 1.6-liter turbocharged power plant could crank out 102 horsepower. Even though that figure sounds abysmal, it was still more than the base Mitsubishi Mirage made just before being discontinued in 2025. Available transaxles for the fifth-gen Colt included a three-speed automatic and a five-speed manual.
Now that it’s been 40 years since those magazine ads for the Colt were published, the car has largely gone extinct. In fact, I even searched known auto recycling websites IAAI and Copart for photos and wasn’t able to find any vehicles being parted out. But then again, it’s kind of fitting right? A car based on the Mirage has now indeed vanished into thin air.
