Today's Summit is an Eagle whose turbo twin cam will likely let you soar. Will you find its price however, keeps it firmly grounded?

When I climbed into the new Audi A3 sedan at last fall's LA Auto Show, the first thing I noticed was that it was a tight fit in there. Me, I happen to like my little Audis roomy, and apparently so do most of you owing to the comments on yesterday's .

When it comes to news outlets you don't get much more conservative than FOX. In a similar vein,…

At least 61% of you also liked that particular car's price, which was about a tenth of what the present day A3 goes for. I imagine of course that the modern car has a leg up on its predecessor when it comes to small things like performance, safety, comfort, features, and reliability, so let's just call it a wash.

Have you ever seen pictures of those great big adoptive families, you know the ones with happy-looking kids of all races and creeds living like some United Nations version of the Brady Bunch, and under the care of one or more really selfless and loving individuals? Yeah, well that's kind of how today's ended up, after a long and convoluted road.

As you may recall, Eagle as a brand was introduced by Chrysler as a home for the cars that the company adopted in the purchase of Jeep and AMC from Renault. The Pentastar folks added to the Eagle's nest a slew of home-grown and import cars giving the marque a pretty broad, if totally unrelated-seeming range. One of those was the Eagle Summit, a car that was built in Japan and sold over the years variously as the Mitsubishi Colt, Lancer, Dodge Colt, Plymouth Colt and for all I know Baltimore Colt.

As a Civic competitor the Summit was somewhat innocuous, never gaining any reputation for excelling in any way, shape, or fashion, but likewise lacking notoriety for any major endemic calamities either. That of course makes them perfect bases for sleeper rides, as does the drop-in availability of Mitsu's 4G63 turbo twin cam, here late of something a lot more potent.

The 2-litre - well, 1997-cc to be completely accurate - DOHC four also went by the factory name of "Cyclone Dash" which is a great name to have if your goal is to get on Mr. Incredible's speed dial or you always wanted to leg lock Chyna in the ring. As for a hot mill however, well, it's probably just better to let the specs do the talking, and in this case those include an EVO III 16G turbo, PTE 880-cc injectors, and a big Greddy pop-off. All together this thing should pump out some serious horsepower, hopefully not too much for its Colt GT 5-speed to handle.

What else of the car? Well, the paint's still shiny and honestly it's surprising to see one of these that doesn't look like it's been used and abused. You know now that I think about it, it's surprising to see one of these at all. This one looks to be in pretty fair shape, although no shots of the interior are provided so we will reserve comment on that aspect.

We also don't know the mileage, who dropped the hot mill into this Summit, or for that matter just how strong you'd have to be to overcome all the potential torque steer that all that likely power through an econobox's front suspension geometry would most likely cause.

What we do know is its price, which is a cool $5,500. For that much you get a car that's a bigger sleeper than that chick that shacked up with the seven stereotypes. Could you buy a real-deal albeit early Evo for that much? Maybe, but then where would the surprised faces be when you light up the front tires at a green light?

What's your take on $5,500 for this sleeper Summit, is that price a wakeup call? Or, is it trying to make a mountain out of a molehill?

You decide!

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H/T to RyanRask for the hookup!

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