Lonsdale (car)

Lonsdale was a marque of car sold in the United Kingdom by the Colt Car Company between 1983 and 1984, taking its name from the suburb of Lonsdale in Adelaide, South Australia, where Mitsubishi Australia had an engine production facility. The only car sold under the brand was the Lonsdale itself, a badge-engineered Mitsubishi Sigma (GJ) offered as the YD41 and YD45, with around 700 produced. It had a four-cylinder engine of 1.6, 2.0 or 2.6 litres, making 81, 95 and 103 bhp, the largest being one of the largest post-war four-cylinder engines. The Sigma was merely an Australian version of the Colt Galant already sold in the UK; the purpose of the brand was to avoid the gentlemen's agreement, a voluntary import quota limiting Japanese imports to about 11 percent of the market. Seventy dealers were to sell 3,500 in 1983 and 12,000 in 1984, targets that were never met, and for 1984 the car was rebranded as the Mitsubishi Galant.