East meets West with this oriental Colt Galant GSR

18 September, 2015

Japanese car culture’s expansion to the proverbial West continues to grow and grow, with an exponentially increasing amount of stories of cars like this beautiful Mitsubishi Colt Galant GSR, which now calls America home, popping up all over the World Wide Web.

In stark contrast to the high-tech Mitsubishi GTO from the early ’90s that NZ Performance Car staffer René gallivants all around the greater North Island in, the Colt Galant GTO and GSR were much simpler beasts from a much simpler time. While René’s GTO features four-wheel steering, seats that mould to your body, and a twin-turbo six-cylinder 6G72 power plant; the Colt Galant GTO is your perennial battler, making do with an enthusiastic two-litre twin-carb engine paired with a five-speed manual. Simple thrills.

But enough of our talk (did we mention that René owns a GTO?) — find a quiet spot, put your feet up, and check out this stunning Petrolicious video on the Colt Galant below:

Header image: Petrolicious / Jeremy Heslup

A second dose of Dash

When the car arrived in Wellington in December 2018 it was duly taken along for entry certification. Vehicle Inspection NZ (VINZ) found some wrongly wired lamps and switches — not too bad — but, much more significantly, some poor welding repairs. As the structural problems were probed more thoroughly, we realized the previous owner’s restoration would not do and we needed an upgrade. Dash had made it into the country but it would take some time and money before he would be free to explore any of New Zealand’s scenic highways.
We took the car to our new home in Johnsonville in the northern suburbs of Wellington and I pored over the car in detail to figure out what was next. There were lots of new parts on the car and a very perky reconditioned drivetrain but the chassis needed serious work.

Lunch with… Jim Palmer

In the 1960s, Hamilton’s Jim Palmer won the prestigious ‘Gold Star’ four times and was the first resident New Zealander home in the New Zealand Grand Prix on five consecutive occasions. He shared the podium with Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham, Bruce McLaren, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, Denny Hulme, Jackie Stewart, and Chris Amon. The extent of his domination of the open-wheeler scene in New Zealand will probably never be matched or exceeded. Yet he’s always been modest about his achievements.