Make Mitsubishi Weird Again

There’s a fact that always rattles around in my noggin when I see, say, a first-gen Mitsubishi Montero Sport. It’s that at one point in the 1990s, Mitsubishi was the fastest-growing Japanese carmaker in the United States. A lot has changed in the 30 years since, but it sounds like the company is going to make another run at the American market. My big ask: Don’t lose the weird.

Obviously, if every automaker listened to the recommendations in The Morning Dump, they’d all be operating at maximum operating margin (or out of business, depending on which advice they took). I’m sincere in my belief that what Mitsubishi needs to do is be a little different–something the brand is historically very good at–and some news has slipped out that makes me feel like this isn’t an impossible outcome. Will the brand’s future include electric cars? Probably, although data shows a lot of the EV market was likely captured in September, before the EV credit went away.

That’s the hopeful side of the news today. On the other end is China. Companies in America are becoming increasingly less reliant on the country, which isn’t exactly what’s happening in Germany. Someone happy to see America move away from foreign manufacturing is UAW President Shawn Fain, but another report from a court-appointed monitor shows that retaliation seems to still be a key factor in his leadership of the union.

Tell Me About This Mitsubishi Van

Credit to Mitsubishi, the company nearly went out of business and had to be wedged into the shaky Nissan-Renault partnership. This became the “alliance,” and it lasted about as long and fared as well as a jar of Kewpie Mayo left in the trunk of a Mirage in a Phoenix parking lot in August.

Renault is all but gone, but Nissan and Mitsubishi have maintained a relationship that’s resulted in shared products that are becoming almost identical. There will be more of this, and there’s likely going to be some Honda in the mix as well.

For the moment, though, Mitsubishi builds no cars in the United States and is targeting a price-conscious buyer, which means it’s having to deal with tariffs. Where this goes is anyone’s guess, but Mitsubishi is clearly prioritizing the North American market, and there are some interesting possibilities.

I’ve already mentioned the growing likelihood that Nissan (and maybe Honda) could share a truck platform in the United States. The Mitsubishi Triton we don’t get is capable, rugged, and just a little different in the way the best Mitsubishis are. But enough about what Mitsubishi can do for Nissan, let’s talk about what Mitsubishi can do for itself.

There’s an article in Automotive News that has some details from a letter to dealers and a trip Mitsubishi dealers took to Japan, and there’s something here to get excited about:

In a Nov. 14 letter to retailers, Mitsubishi Motors North America CEO Mark Chaffin hinted at “a strategic shift” in the product plan that he said “would significantly strengthen” the brand’s sales potential in the U.S.

“While details remain confidential, this could represent a game-changing moment for Mitsubishi dealers,” Chaffin said in the memo reviewed by Automotive News.

Ok, but what does that mean? The chair of the dealer board, R.C. Hill, said he wants a midsize sedan since most of the OEMs are getting out of the space. He also pointed out the obvious, which is that everyone wants a truck. But there’s a little detail here that caught my attention:

The automaker plans to introduce an electric small crossover next summer, followed by a rugged variant of its Outlander compact crossover. Further out in the pipeline are an electrified crossover and a sporty passenger van.

Mitsubishi gave nine U.S. retailers, including Hill, a peek into the future at its assembly plant in Okazaki, Japan, on Nov. 7.

“Mitsubishi has committed to North America,” Hill said. “There is a plan, there are vehicles, and they’re uniquely different.”

The rugged Outlander variant isn’t a surprise, nor is a three-row SUV, but the van is cool. Mitsubishi makes the Delica, whose older variants people love to import (I saw an imported one just yesterday, driving around the New York ‘burbs). Currently, the brand is on the D:5 generation vehicle, which rules. We even briefly got the Delica here as the Mitsubishi “van” for a while. It’s the newer, stranger, Space Exceed-ier ones that people seem to love, though.

And that’s what Mitsubishi does best, historically. It’s different. The Eclipse was a unique and forward-thinking sort of sports car. The Lancer Evo was a novel kind of hi-po sedan. Even the Outlander Sport was an alternative take on the SUV before other automakers caught on to the concept.

If Mitsubishi tries to be Toyota, it will fail. You cannot out-Toyota Toyota, nor can a smaller brand out-Honda Honda. It shouldn’t even try. It should just be different. The company’s move into PHEVs when other brands were abandoning hybrids showed how the brand could be clever, and I want to see more cleverness.

EV Hits The 10%+ Share Number

The expiration of EV tax credits definitely pulled forward a bunch of electric cars, and as predicted, this meant the market beat the magic share number of 10%. It was even bigger in September, when registration data showed that the market hit more than 12% share, according to S&P Global Mobility via Automotive News:

“It was sort of an incentive on steroids,” said Tom Libby, director of industry analysis at S&P Global Mobility. The Sept. 30 end of the $7,500 tax break “was much more impactful than when a normal incentive ends. It was an extraordinary month.”

Registrations for full EVs, not including hybrids, reached a record 168,468 vehicles in September, pushing EV share of the light-vehicle market to 12.4 percent, a gain of 3.7 percentage points from the year-earlier month, S&P Global Mobility said.

That’s cool, but what’s also interesting are the winners and losers. Tesla sold the most, obviously, but its share only increased by 33%, compared to 92% for Chevrolet and 92% for Ford. The biggest percentage increase for a major brand was Audi at 244%, and the biggest drops were Toyota at -88% and VinFast at -73%.

Curiously, 20 people seem to have purchased iPaces, I guess? There were 20 registrations for electric Jags. Were those all Waymos?

German Companies Just Can’t Quit China

There’s a part of me that wants to non-ironically import a long wheelbase Volkswagen Santana to the United States, though I can’t entirely articulate why. It’s an interesting symbol of a time when the relaxation of trade with China benefited both Germany and China. This is a very Eurocentric view, of course, as the massively smaller country (Germany) was the one that made huge profits.

Germany’s reliance on China hasn’t gone as well lately, as Chinese automakers show they can build a better car for the German market than German brands like Porsche and Mercedes. Does this mean there will be a move away from China?

“Germany Is Just Making Too Much Money in China to Back Away Now” is the title of a recent Bloomberg report on the relationship, and the thesis is… German companies can’t escape the short term allure of profits:

From autos to chemicals, the country’s biggest exporters are ignoring government pleas and pouring billions into new projects that tie their fortunes even closer to the world’s second-largest economy. German corporate investment in China jumped €1.3 billion ($1.5 billion) between 2023 and 2024, hitting €5.7 billion, according to the Mercator Institute for China Studies.

Government officials, too, have done little to change the pattern. Privately, they’re meeting and developing action plans, said people familiar with the discussions. But they’re still reluctant to intervene in foreign investment decisions. One senior German official quipped that it’s historically not in the country’s DNA, according to a person familiar with the exchange.

In recent meetings, business leaders and government officials have traded blame over the situation but offered few solutions, said people familiar with the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Left untouched was the deeper question of who bears the costs of shunning China — businesses through lost profits, workers through layoffs, consumers through higher prices, or an already stretched government.

There is no easy answer. Either German companies, already shellshocked from tariffs, are going to have to take an even bigger hit to profits, or the notoriously tight German government will have to spend money.

UAW Leadership Apparently Can’t Overcome ‘Culture Of Division And Retaliation’

United Auto Workers leader Shawn Fain is not one to hide his feelings, which might have benefited his members during the battles the union fought over new contracts with automakers. Winning the war is one thing, but preserving the peace is something much harder and requires a different kind of leadership.

Fain was elected, partially, in response to the corruption and culture of retaliation that permeated the old guard at the UAW. Many of those leaders were sent to prison, and a court appointed a monitor to make sure the union didn’t fall back into old habits. That court-mandated monitor seems to think the organization is backsliding and that the issue comes from the top.

A lot of this is centered around the attempted sidelining of UAW Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock. Considering the organization was mired in a scandal related to finances, the role of treasurer is a key one and requires some independence. Based on the latest report from the monitor, Neil Barofsky, that independence has been under assault:

Even the most robust structural reforms cannot be successfully implemented amidst a culture of division and retaliation. They can only thrive in a culture that embraces the Union’s ethical code and compliance rules with the same enthusiasm that it shows for a successful organizing drive or a successfully negotiated contract. Without such cultural reform, it is only a matter of time before abuse and corruption creep back into the Union as an inevitable byproduct of leaders who foster a culture of divisiveness or who treat compliance rules and ethical norms as niceties that can be discarded when they become inconvenient.

As of the date of this Thirteenth Status Report, for the reasons discussed below, the Union does not appear to be on the path to sustainable cultural reform. The reality is stark: the current prioritization of political infighting and settling personal grievances over meaningful reform are stalling improvement and undermining good faith attempts to complete the necessary compliance infrastructure. Recent experience shows this to be true. The Union spent a great deal of time and resources building a Compliance Department that could learn to guide the Union without the need for external oversight. But instead of leading the Union forward, the Compliance Department became a tool for the President’s Office in its campaign of retaliation against the Secretary-Treasurer.

Things are getting better, says the report, but not in a way that’s going to sustain the organization. Does this mean the monitor is going to stick around a little longer? That would be my guess.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

I love a claymation video! Here’s Wet Leg with “Davina McCall” and a claymation Volkswagen.

The Big Question

Build a perfect Mitsubishi lineup for the United States. What are you doing?

Top photo: Mitsubishi