It appears that Mitsubishi is seriously considering making a small supermini within the next five years, a move that could see the revival of the iconic Colt moniker. According to Autocar, the company’s European sales and marketing boss Guillaume Cartier said the brand “is working on” such a car, but a decision is not yet finalised.
“It’s a question of what is needed,” adding that a model must sell at least 100,000 units globally for the project to be justified. The basis for this consideration comes from Mitsubishi’s recent alliance with Renault-Nissan, said Cartier.
Like any giant automotive conglomerates, the sharing of technologies and platforms help save manufacturers a lot of money. Now that Mitsubishi is part of the world’s largest auto group, it will have access to a more diverse range of architecture, such as the CMF-B platform. In other words, there would be many economics of scale to justify the model.
The new fifth-generation Clio is set to debut later this year, and it will ride on an improved modular CMF-B platform. If all goes well, Mitsubishi’s new supermini will also be built on the same platform, which also means it could potentially be fitted with Renault’s 0.9 litre or 1.3 litre turbo engines.
When talking about potential names for the car, Cartier told the British publication that there were three iconic names for Mitsubishi – Pajero, Lancer and Colt, and added that the Colt would definitely be a consideration for this car. “When we have this association [of an iconic name], we must make sure the car’s personality suits it,” said Cartier.
Speaking at the Geneva motor show, Cartier confirmed that there would be no all-new models from Mitsubishi before 2020. Instead, the company believes its existing line-up of the ASX, Eclipse Cross, Outlander, Pajero and Triton pick-up truck offer a good breadth of options for car buyers.
Now, besides the Colt, Mitsubishi also hinted that the Lancer could be replaced in the future. The next-generation Nissan NP300 Navara and Mitsubishi Triton, due around 2021, could also be jointly-developed. Will this make Mitsubishi great again? What do you think?
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Why cant they make the cars look good?
Matthew Tong. I think you were mislead about the group being the world’s largest auto group. At the time the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance announced their 10.6 million cars sold, VW had not come out with its official results yet. The results the Economist and Fortune ran was based on speculative sales only. Recently VW announced their sales figures for 2017 and both Bloomberg and Reuters ran than VW sold 10.7 million vehicles minus trucks. So Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance is officially 2nd biggest and Toyota, 3rd.
Actually misubishi didn’t contribute much to the result. It’s not a main player in anywhere
Actually, the 10.7 million vehicles that VW states, includes trucks, around 200 000 heavy trucks so mathematically speaking the Renault Nissan Alliance is the largest auto group. Renault Nissan with its subsidiaries dont include heavy trucks. They do however include the total amount of Mitsubishis sold last year but the Alliance has acquired Mitsubishi for more than a year now, so in retrospect Mitsubishi is a part of the Alliance now.
Stevie – Nope the 10.7 million does not include trucks. Its cars only. Read the official results before commenting. VW never includes trucks in its calculations since the statitics started. Also VW has plans to spin off its truck division as VW Trucks soon. To make it really distinct.
Yes, the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi might be number one on technicalities due to the addition of Mitsubishi in the figures. But in all honesty, i really dont think they will be able to defend the crown in 2018, they might even fall lower than Toyota at the end based on 1st quarter 2018 global sales alone which VW and Toyota is growing faster than this newly formed alliance. So Carlos Ghosn might have to eat humble pie in 2018.
still better than Tiara or Juara
Why compare diff era cars? If wanna compare like dis, then P1 tiara looks tons better than Toyota tiara lah.
Toyota got no tiara…fake news.
Go wiki toyota tiara. Dun be lazy.
inspira/lancer(front) + iriz(back)…lol
Lancer gonna back..
Nobody need the Lancer if they are still not capable to make a good one
Too little too late. The competition are eons ahead. Kick yourselves in the butt for being slow!
If unable to keep up and produce good product to the society then better just close down.