I’m sure that somewhere along the way inside Mitsubishi’s headquarters a bunch of people have been telling their design theme that the whole shark nose theme (Mitsubishi calls it a “Jet Fighter” grille) that the Lancer has going on won’t work on a small car.

But they didn’t listen, so here you have the Mitsubishi Colt major facelift for the 2009 model year. Mitsubishi claims only 35.1% carry-over parts from the pre-facelift Colt.

The new Colt also introduces the new Clear Tec brand that indicates which Colt variants are especially friendly to the environment, which will also include a Flex Fuel vehicle that will probably be able to run on petrol or a mixture of ethanol and petrol.

The Mitsubishi Colt CZT hot hatch receives a new name – the Mitsubishi Colt Ralliart, and is now available in both 3-door and 5-door form. It continues to have a 1.5 litre turbocharged engine putting out 150 PS. The suspension has had 8 different changes in different points including a thicker front stabilizer bar to reduce body roll.

Non-Ralliart engine options include a 1.1 litre inline-3 petrol engine with 75 PS and 100Nm of torque, a 1.3 litre petrol engine with 95 PS and 125Nm of torque and a 1.5 litre petrol engine with 109 PS and 145Nm of torque. These are mated to either a 5-speed manual or an AllShift automated manual gearbox.

Note that other markets come with a CVT transmission instead of this AMT transmission, including the ones we have in Malaysia. The diesel Colt has been discontinued as the pre-facelift sales mix consisted of only 13% oil burning Colts.

Look after the jump for plenty of hi-res photos of the new Colt.
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