poltut.blogg.se - Mitsubishi mirage g4

Even if it relied on Subaru and BMW for help with the 86 and GR Supra, there was money to be invested and partners willing to trade expertise for the hybrid and hydrogen technology Toyota had at its disposal. When Toyota decided to make its brand exciting again - thanks to Akio Toyoda - it was able to invest billions of dollars into exciting products like the Toyota 86, the GR Yaris, and the GR Corolla. I think we can all agree the brand needs a drastic overhaul and a brand reinvention to bring it to the front of people's minds again, but such rebirth requires massive investment, and massive investment requires strong enough sales figures to have money available. But it's managed to do that, and a strong customer base was willing to flock back to the brand they'd once fallen in love with.īut Mitsubishi doesn't have brand loyalty, and its sales volumes are tiny by comparison. Nissan had much the same issue, where uninspiring products eventually resulted in poor sales, and the brand needed reinvention. This meant that even when the brand's success dipped, as it did from 2008-2011, it still had the money at its disposal to reinvent itself anew.Īnd those things afforded Toyota the ability to reforge its identity and become one of the best-selling sports car brands in America.

Sales figures - Even when Toyota was at its dullest, it still had a strong enough combination of product and brand loyalty to sell millions of cars to the US audience.

A reputation for reliability - Even if you weren't buying new, buying a used car from Toyota meant Toyota engineering and inherent Toyota reliability.

Brand loyalty - People would buy a Toyota for the badge on the hood, even if the product was dull, because they had decades of experience with a brand that was, if nothing else, consistent.

But you know what Toyota had on its side? Three things: In the early-to-mid 2000s, Toyota was boring and churned out batch after batch of anonymous, characterless, dull automobiles that left us feeling nothing. Things are cyclical in the automotive industry, and we've seen brands go through good and bad patches. The only glimmer of hope Mitsubishi has in the future vehicle department is the L200 midsize pickup, but even that won't be a unique prospect and will share a platform with the next-gen Nissan Navara, the global equivalent to the Frontier.ĭoes any of this seem even vaguely exciting? Not to me, it doesn't, as all I see is a brand that's lost its own identity and is struggling to maintain sales volumes by passing off someone else's homework as its own.

Mitsubishi is planning to leverage electric architecture from Nissan and Renault to build future EVs, but, I can see it already, these will be flavorless badging exercises or light redesigns with nothing unique. Then there's the new Mitsubishi Colt that's been teased in Europe, which will be nothing more than a rebadged Renault Clio. But not even my crystal ball is optimistic enough to see anything exciting coming the way of Mitsubishi.įor starters, the new Outlander Sport - the one that isn't coming to America - is just a rebadged Renault Captur that doesn't even get a unique design. except for the fact that the Nissan Rogue is the same car with better packaging.Įvery brand goes through a slump, and in that time, you look to the future for something new and exciting. That leaves the regular Outlander, and its PHEV variant, which are, admittedly, pretty decent. A new one has been released in Europe, and the Outlander Sport will soon be dead in America, which is of little consolation. The Outlander Sport has been around in its current generation since 2010, and no amount of facelifts can keep that alive.

Then there's the Mirage hatch and Mirage G4 sedan, which are cheap econoboxes that are so bad to drive they were even axed from emerging third-world countries like South Africa for being such dismal failures. There's the Eclipse Cross, which is a mediocre compact crossover that has no chance of standing out against the RAV4, CR-V, CX-5, Tucson, or just about any rival in existence. But what does Mitsubishi have?Ĭurrently, four model lines are available in the USA. Many brands can survive without sports cars, and you only need to look at Hyundai, Kia, and to a degree, even Mazda to see that so long as you have inspired products, you can build a successful brand. Forget about Lancer Evos for a second, that horse is dead and beaten.