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Origins
The Summit, arriving for 1989, was Eagle's subcompact: a Mitsubishi Mirage built in Japan and later at the Diamond-Star plant in Illinois, sold alongside its Dodge and Plymouth Colt siblings to give Chrysler's newest division something affordable to offer. Saloon and hatchback versions covered commuter duty, and the later Summit Wagon — a clever tall mini-MPV with a sliding rear door — was quietly the most interesting thing in the range. Eagle had been invented to keep former AMC-Renault dealers alive, pitched vaguely at import-minded buyers; the Summit fitted the brief precisely because it was an import. It sold adequately through 1996, changed nobody's life, and disappeared with the division itself in 1998 — a competent car whose real story is the corporate scaffolding it briefly held up.
Eagle Summit · Bull-Doser · Public domain
