In response to limited gas supplies and skyrocketing petrol prices, the Big Three had to severely curtail their muscle car offerings starting in 1970. By 1974, the muscle car was dead; in its place were runabout imports that sipped fuel and were easy on the wallet (though there’s a reason only a handful remain around today).

While both Ford and GM were able to react with in-house compacts (the Pinto and Vega, respectively), Chrysler took a different approach; import the imports, and rebadge them as Dodge and Plymouths.

The result was the Dodge Colt. While it came from the factory with a puny four-cylinder engine, more than a few of these cars were modified for HEMI motors, and Bangshift found just such a 1971 Dodge Colt on the eBay.

HEMI-powered Dodge Colts were a cause of much head scratching, speculation, and outright anger. The lightweight and rear-wheel drive of these compacts, compounded by their import status (Chrysler didn’t have the money to develop their own compact) and the HEMI engine under the hood led to some serious changes in the drag racing community.

As drag cars, these vehicles were notoriously difficult to drive, and claimed the life of at least one driver, Don Carlton. However, most of these were Elephant 426 HEMI engines, whereas this particular car features the earlier 392.

There isn’t a ton of information on the page, and indeed the car as a whole comes off as rather Spartan (and not in the spear-throwing, loincloth wearing kind of way.) The custom dashboard is…there, as is the radio and six gauges. There are also three levers on the floor; shifter, emergency brake, and….line lock, perhaps? Of course the prize is under the hood, and there is no room to spare under the hood.

For the $45,000 asking price, we’d like to have seen a nicer dashboard and fewer wires hanging around. And a rollcage should be mandatory for the sale of ANY non-stock HEMI car. But over all, it’s a pretty nifty project…even if it is technically an import, it’s all American where it counts.