We’re big fans of Mitsuoka at CT. It’s easily Japan’s most eccentric and least serious car maker, so you can always rely on it to come out with some bonkers creations to inject fun into an increasingly straight-faced market. Take the M55, for example, which sort-of gives the outgoing Dodge Challenger a new lease of life.
If somehow you aren’t familiar with Mitsuoka, shame on you for a start. The manufacturer (which they technically are, although it feels a stretch to call them that) has long been turning the country’s big-brand domestic cars into some truly weird oddities.
Last year, someone in the company seriously suggested using a Honda Civic to honour the Challenger, and better still, someone else approved it, leading to the M55 Concept.
Gloriously low-res images don’t seem to do the M55 justice
Now, the best news yet: you can now buy one. Just 100 will be made, provided you are in Japan, priced at ¥8.08m (approx £42,000). Punchy, but that’s the price to pay for rarity.
We now also know it’ll use a 1.5-litre turbocharged four-cylinder engine rather than the hybrid we get in Europe and the UK, making the M55 good for 177bhp with power sent to the front wheels through a six-speed manual.
That’s about all we can say on the M55, but it speaks for itself. The midriff of the car is evidently that of a Civic but the front and rear ends have been completely changed.
Nothing screams muscle car like hole-punched seats
A boxy nose sees the addition of quad circular headlights and a grille that looks just different enough from the real thing to presumably skirt around any legal issues. The rear gets a black-out panel between the new taillights along with a ducktail spoiler and comical louvres on the rear window.
Interior changes are, seemingly, much more subtle – with the only obvious difference of note the replacing of a Honda badge with Mitsuoka branding and a set of hole-punched seats.
Oh, and writing this all has given us an idea. We’ll start the petition for a Type R-based, widebodied Hellcat homage. You know you want to, Mitsuoka.
