Junkyard Find: 1995 Eagle Summit ESi Coupe

For the 1989 through 1994 model years, American car shoppers could buy a new Mitsubishi Mirage bearing badges from one of four brands: the Mirage itself, the Dodge Colt, the Plymouth Colt and the Eagle Summit. Then the Colts were shoved aside by Neons and the only Mopar Mirage remaining was the Summit. Here's one of those cars, found in a Denver car graveyard.

The Summit Wagon has been reasonably easy to find in the boneyards, but that car was really a Mitsubishi Chariot (1989-1992) or Mitsubishi RVR (1993-1996) and not a Mirage. The Mirage-based Summits have been very scarce in the yards I frequent, and today's Junkyard Find is only the second example I've documented in nearly two decades.

The Eagle brand was created in 1987, in the aftermath of Chrysler's purchase of American Motors. By the time this Summit was sold, Eagle's relevance was fading fast. The only visible Eagle branding anywhere on this car was the hood ornament and a barely visible decal below one of the taillights.

The Eagle name came from the AMC Eagle, which Chrysler continued to manufacture through the 1988 model year (though the '88 Eagles had AMC badging, they were really Eagle Eagles). The Jeep-Eagle Division was created to sell these cars at existing Jeep dealerships.

Chrysler also used the Eagle name on the two Renault-derived models it kept in production after buying AMC: the Medallion and Premier.

The valuable European chassis engineering of the Premier ended up being used as the basis for Chrysler's LH cars. The Eagle version was the Vision, built for the 1993 through 1997 model years.

The final Eagle was the 1998 Talon, a rebadged Mitsubishi Eclipse. That car was the only Eagle model available for '98.

But that grim time was three years away when this car was new. Jeep-Eagle dealers in 1995 offered the Summit coupe/sedan, the Summit Wagon, the Talon and the Vision

Some 1989-1992 Summits were built at Diamond-Star Motors in Illinois, but all the 1993-1996 Summits were assembled at Mitsubishi's factory in Okayama Prefecture.

This car is a fourth-generation Mirage, which was introduced as a 1993 model in North America and was quite a big bigger than its predecessor.

The hatchback Mirage/Colt/Summit was dropped when this generation went into production.

The MSRP for the 1995 Summit coupe started at $9,836 for the base DL trim level (about $21,931 in 2026 dollars). This car is the higher-zoot ESi, so it cost $10,859 before options ($24,212 after inflation).

Meanwhile, your Mitsubishi Motors USA dealer would sell you essentially the same car for $9,799 (base S model) or $12,569 (high-zoot LS model). Back when the Colt was in the mix, savvy shoppers had even more options when seeking out the best Mirage-family financing deals and warranties.

The engine is the good ol' 4G93 1.8-liter, rated at 113 horsepower and 116 lb-ft.

The base transmission was a five-speed manual, and that's what this car has. A four-speed automatic was available for an extra $654 ($1,458 today), but only if you also bought one of two big option packages that included air conditioning and cost either $1,968 or $2,042 ($4,388 or $4,553, respectively).

This car has A/C plus the cassette radio from those pricey option packages, so we can assume the original buyer wanted a three-pedal car.

And that decision proved to be a pretty wise one, because this car came within 10 miles of reaching 200k on the odometer. That's very good for a cheap 1990s Mitsubishi product.

For what it's worth, I've only documented a single Mitsubishi-built junkyard vehicle with better than 300,000 miles on the clock: this 1986 Dodge Ram 50. Let's just say that I've found many, many discarded Hondas, Toyotas, Subarus and Nissans with much higher final miles and leave it at that.

The (presumably) final owner of this car liked it enough to repair a bad trunk lock with a padlock hasp. A thief would need only a Phillips screwdriver to break in, but this rig is better than nothing.