After seven years of losses and declining sales, Mitsubishi expects an operating profit and a rise in sales in North America. Moreover, it plans to build on the momentum and introduce new nameplates.
The company’s sales target for the fiscal year that ends March 2015 is 116,000 units. That’s a significant increase of 20 percent compared to the 97,000 it shifted last year and beats even Mitsubishi’s own initial projection of 109,000 deliveries in NA.
It also expects an operating profit of US$27 million. Granted, it’s not much but it’s important because it marks the first time its North American operations will turn a profit and it contrasts with the operating loss it expects in its own home market.
“One of the important efforts inside the company has been turning North America from red ink to black”, company CEO Osamu Masuko told Autonews. “Finally, we can realize that.”
Masuko denied that Mitsubishi was thinking about following Suzuki’s example and abandon the US market: “We aren’t thinking of withdrawing whatsoever”, he commented. Instead, he revealed that the Japanese automaker will try to introduce new models.
The Outlander Sport was Mitsubishi’s best-selling vehicle on the first 10 months of the year with 25,620 deliveries, up 25 percent compared to 2013. The Mirage hatch didn’t do bad at all, too, scoring 14,240 sales and, in Masuko’s words, “performing beyond expectations, helping revitalize the dealers and contributing to our profit”.
That’s why the carmaker is considering adding its Thailand-built sedan version, which is sold in other markets as the Mirage G4 and the Attrage, and the Outlander PHEV plug-in hybrid crossover that’s already available in Europe and Japan.
“We are putting our emphasis on SUVs in the United States”, he said. “So we have to think about introducing the next-generation Pajero to the US. There’s going to be a PHEV version and we would like to introduce it.”
The full-size SUV, which was previewed with the GC-PHEV concept at last year’s Tokyo Auto Show, was last sold in the US in 2008 (Pajero translates to a not-so-nice word in Hispanic, thus the name change). Both gasoline and plug-in hybrid versions will be launched after April 2016.