Mitsubishi is a big car brand in Australia, but for how much longer?

Mitsubishi is doing a fantastic job selling cars in Australia, which is all the more impressive because it has pulled out of China, is doing almost the same in Europe, and is little more than a niche player in the US.

This is a brand that didn’t seem to be affected at all by the end of local production, unlike Holden.

Looking purely at sales figures since 1991, Mitsubishi has exceeded 80,000 annual sales five times: twice before 2008, the year local production ended, and three times since.

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Last year it delivered 74,574 vehicles in Australia, making it the fifth best-selling brand here. It was even more popular in New Zealand, where it ranked third in 2024.

Even more impressive is that it achieved this feat with an incomplete range of new-generation Triton vehicles, a trio of fairly ordinary SUVs, plus the much more impressive Outlander.

But yesterday’s news that Mitsubishi is discontinuing its Eclipse Cross and Pajero Sport and finally replacing its ASX has exposed some key vulnerabilities for the brand.

As a junior member of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, Mitsubishi is geofenced under the triumvirate’s ‘leader-follower’ model development strategy.

The focus is on Southeast Asia, with regions like Europe – a market it said it would exit before returning the following year – being an afterthought. ‘Oh, I think we’ll stay here. Here, put our badge on this Renault.”

That led to the company launching a new, thoroughly modern-looking small Xforce SUV… only to turn around and confirm that it wouldn’t meet the stricter (and, as Mitsubishi would argue, often difficult) regulations.

That our market did not seem to play a role in Mitsubishi’s decision-making is not entirely surprising, as we are only a small piece of Mitsubishi’s pie. For example, the company produced more than a million vehicles worldwide in 2023, while fewer than 75,000 were sold here.

We may love Mitsubishis here, but in the grand scheme of things, we’re hardly a huge market.

Now a coming Australian government regulation is forcing Mitsubishi to ax its fourth and fifth best-selling models here, replacing its third most popular model with a European-made vehicle that will almost certainly be more expensive and may have more supply. limited.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see the back of the existing ASX after 15 years for sale. Replacing it with a rebadged Renault will result in a high-tech, more dynamic small SUV gracing Mitsubishi showrooms.

However, it still won’t be a class leader and now it’s not such a safe choice to recommend to friends or relatives who absolutely don’t care about cars.

There is also the very real question of how long Mitsubishi will continue to rebadge Renault products, as a merger between Nissan and Honda looms large and could bring Mitsubishi with it.

Is this ASX simply a stopgap solution, and what will the Mitsubishi range look like in five years’ time? If Mitsubishi can’t rely on Renault, and if its vehicles aren’t designed for Australia, what will it sell?

We’ve seen Mitsubishi’s shadowy future model teaser, showing what looks like a new generation of Delica and Pajero Sport plus a few crossovers, but detailed plans for the rest of the decade for our market have yet to be shared.

Before then, expect a drop in ASX sales with the new model, while the loss of Eclipse Cross and Pajero Sport volume will be keenly felt.

Mitsubishi has indicated it doesn’t plan to pull out of these segments forever, but it hasn’t said exactly when replacements will arrive – other than to say its “several all-new or significantly updated models” will arrive sometime in 2030.

This could end up being a blunder. Mitsubishi survived the end of local production and remained high in sales during years when it had fairly average products.

The company has done this thanks to a pretty solid reputation for reliability and prices that have historically been more competitive than rivals like Toyota and Mazda.

Will it be able to remain as strong with potentially more expensive and very different products in the showrooms? We’ll see.