Mitsubishi says Mirage will be better

Complaints from Australia will ensure a better car for customers when the Mitsubishi Mirage returns to local roads.

The price fighter is being revived to create a new starter car for the Japanese brand and a direct competitor for rivals including the Nissan Micra and Hyundai i20 early next year. The Mirage is promised with a nice price and global engineering but, more importantly, a commitment to delivering what Australians expect from a new car.

"This is our lifeline. If we fail, we will fail," the new boss of Mitsubishi Motors Australia, Mutsuhiro Oshikiri, reveals to Carsguide. "This is the starting point. A really important car. We cannot fail." He is trying to rebuild Mitsubishi following the collapse of support since the company withdrew from local manufacturing in Adelaide.
The Mirage is a new global price fighter and comes with a range of promises, including a sharp starting price - that needs to be well under $15,000 in Australia - and fuel economy better than 5.0 litres/100km. It weighs less than 850 kilograms and has a tiny 1.2-litre, three-cylinder engine.

But a press posse savaged it during a preview drive in Thailand, where it is built, and that has led to promises of improvements for Australia. "We have listened. We understand," says Oshikiri.

The car's underwhelming CVT transmission is being tweaked to make it more spritely for Australia, although there is nothing that can be done - in the short term - about the cost-down development work that's produced a relatively humble car suited to budget buyers across Asia. Mitsubishi is now working on a youth-focussed promotional campaign for the Mirage to try and excite the same sort of support the car had when it was a three-door version of the Lancer.

This time around, it's the first all-new model from Mitsubishi after the global financial crisis and it has cut any ties to the Lancer. "In two years, three years, comes the new Lancer. Outlander comes first, then the new Lancer. The lifecycle is longer than normal but this is not fatal, but transient," says Oshikiri.

Still, he admits the current Mitsubishi lineup is too old and lacks true hero cars. "The product is old .. and the prices are too high," he says. But he promises an aggressive program to rebuild Mitsubishi, putting customers first and also focussing on support for dealers to deliver the right support for the brand. "Mitsubishi is too much an engineering company. Now we return to a marketing company. This is what I'm thinking," he says.