Gregson Mathe
It’s no secret that Mitsubishi has been on a steady decline since the 90s. Profitability for the automaker has been spotty at best. In Q3 2006, they posted their first profitable quarter in 4 years. After that, they didn’t post a North American profit in 7 years prior to 2015. Finally, they also apologized to the public for fabricating MPG numbers much like VW, but to far less press. Mitsubishi Motors is clearly a much maligned portion of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, especially here in the US.
What’s even worse news is the fact that Mitsubishi has now killed off the Evo variant of the Lancer, our last vestige of the once proud performance focused automaker. So what’s even left? Well there’s the Lancer itself, which is…perfectly average. Everything else they off is just, there. It’s not note worthy. Until now.
And I hate to say this, but Mitsubishi is about to be relevant because of a crossover.
Mitsubishi is reviving the name “Eclipse,” but not in the way we want. It will now be a crossover called the Eclipse Cross. Mitsubishi hates enthusiasts and will profit because of it. Making a crossover is a sure fire way to make it rain money T-Pain style. Everyone wants the higher seating position with car-like feel and the utility of an SUV. They’ll get it from another source now.
The Eclipse Cross will debut at the Geneva Auto Show in March. The shot above makes one think that the crossover will look pretty handsome; as handsome as a crossover can be, which is not very much. Let’s hope this is better than the Outlander Sport which was, in a word, terrible.
And while all this diluting of the gene pool continues, let’s remember what Mitsubishi used to be remembered for.
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