I have spent my fair share of time in cop cars. And I know what you’re thinking, but you’d be wrong. See, as the son of a country copper who served the NSW force for three decades, I can remember all sorts of highway patrol cars turning up at our house (attached to which was often the one-room police station). I can just remember Cooper Ss and the comical sight of an eight-foot-tall copper winding himself out of the things, and I recall vividly a dark green LC Torana GTR that used to haul up in the driveway mid-shift.
In later years (but still a kid) I was ferried around in cop cars (as were all coppers’ young ‘uns back then). But an extra special treat was to score a ride in a highway patrol Charger. I blame this youthful exposure for the undercoated pile of Hemi-powered crud that currently resides at the MBC.
Ultimately, I left home and my relationship with HWP cars changed dramatically. For the worse. Instead of looking forward to seeing them, I was now watching my mirror like a hawk lest one of the buggers spotted me having too much fun me and required a roadside chat. And into that category, I’ll put things like VL Turbo Commodores, XR8 Falcons, and even XD and VK V8s. And this car, the Mitsubishi Cordia Turbo.
Not every state or territory operated Cordia Turbos, but NSW did and right at the time I was perhaps most interested in the concept of rapid transit. Bummer. And not that I’d have been stupid enough to try to do a runner, but everybody back then knew you couldn’t outrun a Cordia Turbo. Not unless it blew up mid-pursuit, anyway.
The Mitsubishi Cordia Turbo was a dead-set revelation when it landed on an unsuspecting Aussie public back in 1984. Sure, Mitsubishi had already blooded us with the Starion Turbo, but the unassuming looking little Cordia hatchback was straight out of left field. With a bang.
Maybe it was because we’d already had the non-turbo (yawn) Cordia in showrooms for a while by then, that the impact of the turbocharged model was so immense.
Maybe it was the combination of a modern hatchback body and that all important Turbo badge. Or maybe – and here’s where my money is – it was the 200km/h top whack and sub-16 second quarter mile time that set everybody back on their heels. Yep, in an era when nothing with four wheels moved too quickly, the Cordia Turbo came to Earth to remind us that performance had not been totally forgotten.
If you’ve ever driven a Cordia Turbo, you’ll know that the front-drive platform kind of defined torque-steer. And believe it or not, the thing had to be ordered with power-steering as an extra-cost option, because the boggo Cordia T didn’t have it. Even the rear brakes were drums instead of discs.
So how did it work at all? Power to weight ratio, my friends. With a kerb mass of around 1050kg even with the power steering option, the 110kW and 210Nm made for rapid transit in the mid ’80s.
And everything was fine, until it wasn’t. Enter the new-for-1986 unleaded petrol and suddenly, carmakers were having all sorts of problems making their current engines work on the lead-free brew. Holden threw its hands in the air, ditched the old faithful six-banger and went shopping at Nissan for a replacement.
You might imagine that a Japanese carmaker such as Mitsubishi wouldn’t have suffered too much, given that JDM models had been using ULP for years by then. But no, the switch from dirty to clean power under the lid of the Cordia Turbo wreaked havoc. Havoc to the tune of a 20kW loss of power.
But even with its new-for-ULP power output of 90kW, the Cordia Turbo was still considered a quick little car. Quick enough, in fact, to make it on to the fleet of the NSW Highway Patrol. Okay, so maybe the real story isn’t as romantic as all that, because the Cordia was very much a stop-gap while Holden got its V8 to work on ULP and the VL Turbo Commodore became a reality. But still, to see the Mitsu in its HWP white paint and the blue light on the roof, still brings back some extremely bitter-sweet memories to a bloke like me.
But what about the boys and girls in blue on the front line? What did they make of the Cordia Turbo and what are their recollections of one of the most left-field cars ever to set up a road-block?
The car in this story is part of the Historic Emergency Vehicles Australia (HEVA) club’s collection and one of many owned by club members who figure the historical importance of cars like this shouldn’t be forgotten. So we sat down for a chat with HEVA president, Mark Noakes (himself a 35-year veteran of the NSW force) and it seems controversy kind of followed the Cordia Turbo in its HWP role.
For a start, testing of the car for policing duties occurred using the ‘dirty’ 110kW leaded-petrol version. So there were a few grumbles among the membership when the car turned up in ULP, 90kW form.
But according to Mark, the novelty of the Cordia’s layout was also a factor in how things often turned out in, er, pursuit situations. Proving that cars aint cars, Mark points to the training that was being given to HWP officers at the time.
“The HWP officers had completed their high-speed courses in rear-wheel drive V8s and had many years of experience driving them. You can image being handed the keys to a front-wheel drive 1.8-litre turbo and being told ‘this is your new work car’ without redoing the high-speed driving course to get familiar with them.”
Mark also reckons the way the average HWP car is used also played a part in how the Cordias were received.
“They’d go from sitting outside all night in the freezing cold to fired up for a call-out and being immediately booted up to 200km/h. Then, when they got where they were going, the drivers would shut them down immediately without idling them down.”
In an era before water-cooled turbochargers and ceramic turbo bearings, this was a great way to toast the snail. Combine that mechanical fragility with a cohort of drivers who learned to drive fast in much heavier, rear-drive cars, and you can see why there aren’t many (any?) ex-HWP Cordias around these days. In fact, this very car is actually a tribute rather than a restored ex-cop car, such is the difficulty of tracking one down today.
Mark’s colleagues clearly enjoyed the Cordia’s charms, and recollections are usually pretty good ones, although the physical size of the Cordia is a constant theme.
Says one former Cordia Turbo HWP pilot: “Working arvos with a six-foot-six mate and I’m six-two; it was a squeeze. I had fun with them (Cordias) moving sideways when taking off flat out. I was mainly working the F3 and for a ‘turn and burn’ I had to turn the air-con off, for that bit of extra power. Working two-up was very cosy. Getting an offender in the rear … that’s another story …”
And it wasn’t just the HWP that used Cordia Turbos. According to Mark they were also used as unmarked cars in various crime squads and special units. And they were spread across the State, not just in Sydney. They served in places like Mittagong, Armidale, Ballina, Tweed Heads, Wagga, Leeton, Bega and Narrandera.
Which is possibly why there were ultimately a range of views on the little turbo terrors among the blokes that were tasked with driving them. As Mark sees it overall the Cordia was: “An enjoyable car to drive, a typical 1980s car, sloppy manual gearbox, a light clutch and it went where you pointed it. Most of the time. And it sounded great and it went well if you kept the revs up and was good for weaving in and around traffic due to its size.”
But other members don’t have such rose-coloured glasses strapped on when recalling the Cordia Turbo. Comments like “Unguided missile” and “Over 160km/h they would start to float. With a full body kit they sat down at that speed and were great … if you didn’t want to go round a corner.”
Others were a bit more diplomatic, remembering the Cordia as: “A great little car but not meant for the brutality of police punishment”.
And just to prove that even some Highway Patrol coppers do have a sense of humour, the Cordia Turbo HWP car’s inability to accommodate an unruly ruffian in the back seat quickly meant the car became known as the Ghurka. As in, ‘takes no prisoners’. Brilliant.