Future Mitsubishi models will carry an Australian flavour, according to a top executive, as the Japanese brand looks to leverage more local expertise and knowledge for global products.
Speaking to CarsGuide, Mitsubishi Australia product strategy manager Tim Clarke said the success of the local market, which is up 11.5 per cent so far in 2022 to 41,748 sales and third behind Toyota and Mazda, is giving the brand a louder voice when it comes to new models.
“It’s no secret that we are quite a strong market for Mitsubishi, globally, in terms of our sales and our profitability that we provide back into the global business,” he said.
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“We are also gaining recognition as being a mature market where our use cases are quite diverse, and we expect quite a lot from our vehicles.
“MMC (Mitsubishi Motors Corporation) is starting to understand that if we can make it work here, it’s probably going to work in other markets as well.
“We’re trying to leverage that, and bring more development here instead of into other markets where they might have done it in the past.”
Mitsubishi Australia used to build cars locally, but shifted to a full-time importer in 2008 when the 380 sedan was put out to pasture, but Mr Clarke revealed some of the engineering and development talent has remained with the brand.
“I worked at Mitsubishi at Tonsley when we were developing the 380 in the early 2000s as part of the testing and validation team for that,” he said.
“We’ve got another three guys up here who are from that engineering group, who actually still hold a lot of expertise and knowledge around what we need to do to make a vehicle work in our market, on our roads.
“That was kind of lost a bit through that transition from a manufacturing business to a sales and marketing business, and now we’re reigniting that with MMC and getting their ear and understand with what our capability is.
“They [MMC] are starting to ask us more about the Australian market in particular, where they haven’t in the past, which is really rewarding for us.
“[We went from an] engineering focus into a product and marketing focus with that engineering background, and right now, it’s probably no better time to in engineering and product planning because of the transition in technology, and emissions, and everything else, requires a really technical, detailed understanding of how products work to understand what’s going to work in our market and meet regulation and market needs going into the future.”
Mr Clarke revealed the new Outlander, which launched late last year in petrol-engine form and is about to hit showrooms with a plug-in powertrain, was slightly tweaked in Australia ahead of its market introduction.
Mitsubishi Australia made small tweaks to active safety systems to keep the traffic sign recognition system showing the last recorded speed for longer on the driver display, as well as slight changes to the sensitivity of the lane-keep assist tech.
While Mr Clarke would not confirm whether the vehicle development would ramp up to include local suspension tuning (like Hyundai and Kia) or hot weather testing, Mitsubishi Australia product PR manager Adam Davis confirmed a Japanese vehicle development team would be embedded Down Under for further evaluation.
“We call it [Australia] a core market internally, and our relationship with MMC has never been stronger in that regard,” he said.
“There are delegations coming out to better understand Australian market conditions, but also going for road drives and understanding [our market].”
As to exactly what future models Mitsubishi has in its pipeline, that is still unclear, but being part of a global alliance that includes Nissan and Renault means the brand has a deep well to draw on.
Australia will influence future Mitsubishi models as local market becomes more important to Japanese brand - CarsGuide
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