- [James] Thank you to Magic The Gathering
for sponsoring a portion of this video.
- The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.
Beautiful, isn't it?
A rally car for the road.
A millennial icon burned into our collective memory
through movies, video games, and anime.
Undoubtedly, one of the most desired cars
for anyone born after 1985.
Thanks to this car,
Mitsubishi was gonna be cool forever.
(car crash)
At least that's what I thought.
Today Mitsubishi's lineup is boring.
Why?
How could they?
How dare they kill off their most iconic model
in favor of crossover SUV's and commuter cars?
Well, it's because they don't care what you think.
Are they tone deaf?
Why did they stop making cool cars?
Is this a good decision?
Why don't they care what we think?
Today were gonna look at the long,
and frankly strange,
troubled history of Mitsubishi
and see if they can survive
without having a single performance car in their lineup.
I did a bunch of digging to find out what was behind
this total branding 180.
And what I found out was crazy.
- Thanks to Magic The Gathering for sponsoring
a portion of today's video.
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See you next time.
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- This is the Eclipse Cross.
It's a crossover SUV and it made a lot of people
a lot of mad.
Why?
Well, the name.
The Eclipse is one of Mitsubishi's most iconic cars,
second to the Evo.
It was a true sports car.
And as we'll see, it was integral to the tuning scene
here in the States.
"The Fast and the Furious" might not be around
if it wasn't for this car.
It's that important.
To put that name on this is bold,
to say the least.
People lost their marbles when Mitsubishi
first announced this thing.
But as I'll keep reminding you,
Mitsubishi doesn't care what you think.
Mitsubishi is not just a car company.
The Mitsubishi most people know is Mitsubishi Motors,
a small subsidiary of the Mitsubishi Corporation,
which has their hands in pretty much every industry
including energy, banking, mining, farming, and real estate.
With cars playing a relatively small role
within the Mitsubishi business universe,
this actually makes Mitsubishi Motors a more
interesting company to examine than other OEMs,
in my opinion.
If your business doesn't necessarily rely
on cars to survive,
how does that influence what kind of cars you build?
That's an exciting question to me.
Mitsubishi started building cars in 1918,
when the Mitsubishi shipbuilding company
churned out the Model A,
which was Japan's first production car,
with a run of 22 units.
Fast forward 50 years
and Mitsubishi Motors is looking to get into America.
But they can't do it alone.
So, they linked up with Chrysler in Detroit
to bring their Gallant to the States
under the name Dodge Colt.
This is what's called a captive import.
The car built somewhere else has one name,
brought to another country and sold as something else.
The relationship was symbiotic in nature.
Imagine Dodge is this urchin crab trying to protect itself
from increasing demands for compact fuel efficient cars,
and Mitsubishi is this fire urchin
just trying to make its way across the Pacific.
The relationship is mutually beneficial for both parties.
Dodge meets consumer and regulatory demands,
and Mitsubishi gets to vibe out.
And right on a crab, which sounds pretty rad.
While Mitsubishi was still a small player in the US,
the story was a little different around the globe.
Mitsubishi Motor Company realized the potential
of motor sports as marketing
and entered the Gallant in rallies
to show off its reliability,
and it really paid off.
In 1972 the Gallant won the demanding
Australian Southern Cross rally,
starting a five-year event winning streak for Mitsubishi
and a proud tradition in rally racing,
which we'll dive into a little deeper later.
The rally wins boosted Mitsubishi's reputation
all over world and increased demand.
And this was great news
because their pal Chrysler
wanted to build a global car brand.
So, they acquired a piece of Mitsubishi
with long-term plans to eventually buy the entire company.
That strategy wouldn't pan out,
but there would be some pretty cool cars to come
out of the Chrysler partnership
like the Starion Conquest, 3000GT Stealth,
and the aforementioned Eclipse.
By 1980 Mitsubishi was building 1 million cars a year,
and Chrysler was importing
more than a hundred thousand of them into the US.
This number was bumping up against
the voluntary import limit Japanese manufacturers
were abiding by in the US.
So, Mitsubishi had to get clever to sell more cars.
So, they did what other OEMs like Honda and Toyota did
and decided to plant their roots in the US
with a big old factory in Normal, Illinois.
Go Wildcats!
Ironman, you're all right.
To help build the new facility,
Chrysler put in $325 million,
half of what was needed.
This renewed venture between Mitsubishi and Chrysler
was called Diamond Star Motors.
With the factory complete in 1988,
it began pumping out one car
under a number of different badges.
The Plymouth Laser,
Eagle Talon,
and Mitsubishi Eclipse.
It was the beginning of a defining era
for Mitsubishi in the States.
While the Laser and Talon were styled by Chrysler,
all the design work underneath was done by Mitsubishi.
The two-door coupe was intended
to be a sporty treat for the masses,
but (indistinct) tuners quickly discovered
something very interesting about the Eclipse triplets.
The engine.
The Eclipse was available
with Mitsubishi's 4G63 inline four engine,
the same engine Mitsubishi was putting
in their Lancer Evo rally cars over in Japan.
In stock form the turbocharged 4G63T
made 180 horsepower, not bad,
but those tuners were looking to make a lot more,
and because the engine had a cast iron cylinder block,
it was able to take a lot more boost
than it made from the factory.
The ceiling for tuning these motors was really high.
You couple that with also available all wheel drive
and super aerodynamic styling
and you have a car pretty much hand built
for drag strip glory.
Because of these features,
the Eclipse helped jumpstart the fledgling
import tuner scene here in America,
and thus carved out Mitsubishi's place
in the car nerd cannon,
making their current lineup today even more confusing.
At the time, Mitsubishi had a devoted following
and a strong brand identity.
At that time it seems they did care what you think.
Further proof of the Eclipse's importance in tuner history,
is the second gen DSMs inclusion
in "The Fast and the Furious".
So, with all this history
it's disappointing to see the Eclipse name
being used on a crossover instead of a sports car.
But as we'll see later,
it might be for the best.
As far as I'm concerned,
the Evo was the tip of the brand identity spear.
I was curious what the actual sales numbers
for those cars were,
so I spent a lot of time looking at data,
I learned how to make a graph in Google Sheets,
and I got to work.
This line right here
is the Lancer Evolution's sales in the US
for the life of the model.
And here's the line for Eclipses from the second gen
because I couldn't find first gen numbers.
And here's the line for Mitsubishi's overall sales.
Oh, that's bad.
If these numbers are anything to go by,
people in the US didn't give a hoot
about Mitsubishi's little rally car.
Maybe a better way to say it
is that people who could afford to buy one
didn't give a hoot.
Right around the time the Evo finally came to the US,
Mitsubishi was falling off a cliff.
What the heck happened?
Well, I'll tell ya.
That little point right there
is Mitsubishi's peak in the US so far.
In 2002 Mitsubishi sold just under 346,000 vehicles.
Seven years later, they'd reached rock bottom with 53,986.
Take a hurt, man.
That sucks.
Trouble started in 2000
when Chrysler continued their pursuit to buy Mitsubishi.
Chrysler at the time had merged with Daimler,
the parent company of brands like Mercedes,
Maybach, and Freightliner.
Daimler Chrysler bought a 34% stake in Mitsubishi.
And remember, this was part of Chrysler's plan
to buy a global brand with plants around the world.
Unfortunately, Daimler Chrysler's purchase
could not have come at a worse time.
Less than one month since the $2 billion deal was signed,
news broke that Mitsubishi did a booboo.
Under US and Japanese law,
automakers must tell the government
about defects reported by customers.
Mitsubishi didn't do that.
Mitsubishi hadn't done that since 1977.
That's bold.
I guess they didn't care what the government thought either.
As a result,
Mitsubishi recalled over 600,000 cars in 2000,
costing the company an estimated $69 million.
Nice.
Even though most of the cars affected were in Japan,
50,000 of them were American vehicles.
Probably not the impression you wanna make
when someone just gave you $2 billion.
A lot of high level people at Mitsubishi
claimed to have no knowledge of the coverup,
which I don't know is possible, I guess,
but come on.
Interestingly, the recall was three years
before Mitsubishi hit their peak.
So, that wasn't the culprit in their sales slump,
though I suspect it played a large part.
The defect coverup was a gut punch to Mitsubishi's stock,
and to make matters worse,
the company had a lot of debt that was starting to pile up.
You'd expect for Daimler Chrysler to bail them out.
After all Mitsubishi was their door into the Asian market
and they wouldn't want to lose that, right?
That was the whole freaking point of the partnership,
but the troubles were causing Daimler Chrysler
to get cold feet and they slowly started selling off
their stake in Mitsubishi,
eventually severing all ties by 2005.
Knowing this, it's actually pretty amazing
that the Evo made it to the US at all.
We got really lucky.
With the looming debt and shaky ground beneath them,
Mitsubishi could have easily scrapped
any plans to bring it here,
not to mention letting it stay here for 13 years.
I think we've got to count our blessings on this one.
A side effect of the Daimler Chrysler Mitsubishi divorce
was the evolution 10,
which would be a radical step forward
for the beloved rally car.
The new Evo launched in 2007.
Gone was the legacy 4G63T
and in its place was the aluminum block 4B11T,
which immediately made diehards worried.
"An aluminum block.
Are you kidding me, dude?
There's no way it'll be as strong as the cast iron block."
Mitsubishi had to make the switch
to meet emissions regulations,
but some people saw that change as the company
losing a little bit of its character.
Of course, those people will be proven wrong
by just as, if not better performance,
from the new aluminum engine.
But hey, a legacy like that isn't gonna be
forgotten that quickly.
Also the Evo 10 styling was a little too much
for some people.
I personally liked it a lot and still do.
I still get excited when I see them,
but it's really a matter of personal preference.
To make matters worse,
Mitsubishi closed their performance division
Rally Art in 2010,
signaling the end of a motor sports era at the company.
I told you,
they don't care what you think.
Things weren't just tough for the Evo,
but for Mitsubishi as a whole.
From their peak in the early 2000s,
Mitsubishi America's sales were in a nosedive.
Over the next 10 years
units sold would fall nearly 600%,
from over 345,000 in 2002,
to 57,790 in 2012.
Something had to be done and fast.
During the long slide down,
Mitsubishi announced a new strategy for the US in 2011.
This plan is responsible for the company's huge shift
from the funky and fun image they had
to something a little less exciting that we see today.
The key to the plan was to stop producing
region specific cars for the US
and bring Mitsubishi's global lineup here,
but still produce them in Illinois.
I think that's pretty cool.
By 2014, the Endeavor SUV, Gallant sedan,
and the third gen Eclipse will be dunzo.
The end of the Eclipse was surprising,
being their longest lasting model.
But considering the Eclipse only sold 7,500 units in 2011,
the decision was justified.
One car that Mitsubishi kept alive was the Lancer,
as the small sedan made up a good chunk of their sales.
Something interesting to note on our sales graph
is the relatively stable sales of lancers
through the 2010s,
seemingly unaffected by the wild fluctuation
of the company sales as a whole.
I have no idea what this data suggests.
Other than that,
the Lancer filled a small but dedicated niche in the market,
which only makes the model's 2017 death in the US
even more painful.
So, which cars would be filling
in the lineup with the region specific cars gone?
Well, some really strange ones, to be honest.
In 2011 Mitsubishi announced the i-MiEV electric car,
a new global small car,
and new hybrids.
So how'd that work out?
I'll tell you.
Mitsubishi's new strategy was off
to a strong start until 2016,
when on April 20th news broke
that Mitsubishi had been, quote,
manipulating test data to overstate the fuel economy
of some of their Japanese models
going back to that 1991.
Think Dieselgate,
but with cute JDM micro cars.
At first Mitsubishi owned up
to only lying about four of their cars,
but it turns out that they also lied about 13 other cars
that were involved.
Not a good look,
and their investors thought so too.
Mitsubishi stock plummeted 50%
and made company leadership look really bad.
Yeah, that would.
So, the new strategy wasn't off to a great start,
but looking at our graph,
sales in the US don't look
like they were affected that much.
All right, so borderline criminal negligence aside,
what did Mitsubishi do right?
Where are they headed today?
Let's talk about those global cars they brought over here.
That new global smart car they teased,
turned out to be the Mirage,
a tiny, colorful, affordable commuter car.
The Mirage is one of the cheapest cars for sale in the US
with a 2020 MSRP of 13,995.
And hey, it's available as a manual.
Next was the Outlander hybrid,
which my boys up in Canada thought was pretty good.
And that's where the US lineup is today.
They make three different versions of the Outlander,
two Mirages, and the Eclipse Cross.
Okay, so Mitsubishi took one of their most iconic names,
added Cross to the end as in crossover SUV,
then made it look like this.
Some people really hate it,
but I will admit it does look better in person.
But regardless of looks,
I can't deny that the Eclipse Cross was a step over the line
when it came to Mitsubishi's brand identity,
or more accurately, the lack thereof.
20 years ago, Mitsubishi had sports cars.
They were cool.
The Eclipse, the Evo, the GTO,
which I didn't even talk about,
these were all cars that high schoolers wanted.
I don't think that holds true for their lineup today.
That being said,
if I had a brand new Mirage when I was in high school,
I'd be pretty stoked.
My point is Mitsubishi no longer makes cars
that car nerds like myself wanna buy.
But as the title of this video states,
Mitsubishi doesn't care what you think.
And I think that's because these boring cars are working.
Mirage sales absolutely crushed Evo 10 figures
in the last three years of the rally cars life.
The Mirage even outsold the regular Lancer before that died.
And let's talk about that Outlander.
As of last year, it made up a strong 61% of Mitsubishi sales
with over 74,000 units sold.
Add the Eclipse Cross into that
and SUV's make up 77% of Mitsubishi's business in the US.
The pandemic has greatly affected sales this year,
which I'm not surprised,
but once things calm down
I expect Mitsubishi to get back into the groove.
Their identity isn't about motor sports anymore,
but about giving people as much value as they can.
And that strategy seems to be working out for them,
even if they have a long way to go to reach their 2002 peak.
And I mean a long way to go.
Thank you very much for watching WheelHouse this week.
Let me know in the comments
what your favorite Mitsubishi is.
It is a toss up for me between the second gen Eclipse
and I think the Evo eight.
Just let me know, man.
I think Mitsubishi was a really cool brand
and now they're just trying something different.
I've wished them the best honestly
because it's cool to have variety in the market.
Hey, we have a podcast called Pass Gas.
It's an in-depth history podcast of like hour long episodes.
A lot of fun, I do it with James and Joe.
Please check that out on any platform of your choosing.
Follow Donut on all social media @donutmedia.
Follow me @nolanjsykes.
Mitsubishi, I love ya.
Be kind.
I'll see you next time.