Drag cars often seem to defy the laws of physics with respect to acceleration, but the car in this video does it in a totally different way. There seems to be equal parts luck and driver acumen at work here as this little car didn’t steer itself back down to Earth. We really think that the door handle could have scraped pavement as far over as this thing was.
We think the car is an old Cricket with a stretched nose (The Dodge Colt was the same car with some different grille work up front). The rear of the car seems to have the Cricket look, and the engine is advertised as being a 4G63, which for those of you that do not speak Mitsu is a 2.0L four cylinder engine that can be built to make humongo power.
The car launches badly, then the driver lays on the throttle, loses the handle on the car and that’s when the magic happens. This is a truly amazing save!
Press play below and watch the drag racing gods spare this car and driver an ugly wreck!
GREAT SAVE!!! That does appear to be a long-nose Colt. But to set the record straight, Colts & Crickets were NOT the same vehicles. While they were both marketed as Mopar vehicles, Colts were made in Japan by Mitsubishi, Crickets were made in UK by Hillman. Thanks for sharing the cool video!
John Bergener: Thanks for the great save compliment. I thought that video would stay hidden on Youtube forever, but someone found us out and here we are! The car is actually a 1971 Toyota Corolla with a Mazda R-100 nose and a Mitsubishi 4G63 2.0 liter engine that could be found in 90-99 Mitsubishi Eclipses, Eagle Talons, and Plymouth Lasers. We plan to have much cooler videos to post this year with the 2 rear wheels on the ground!!
I have never seen a 4G63, but I love the car. I never get that lucky.
Beaver Martin, thanks for the love of our car. I used to think that I never get that lucky, either, till it happened to me. We look to have much greater success in 2014 than just “not crashing” the car.
To set the record straight…the car is a 1971 Toyota Corolla that is a full tube chassis car that is stretched 12 inches over the stock wheel base. The front end is a combination of the stock original Corolla and a Mazda R-100. At the time when the car was built it was tough to get a front end built and time was running short,so we took what we had and put together what you see.
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