Mitsubishi Mirage unveiled

The all-new Mirage is unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show with the promise of a pricetag to rival its closest Japanese rival, the Nissan Micra from $12,990. It's still a year away from local roads but the car looks good and will be built in Thailand to control costs. 

"It's pretty important for us. It's a fairly large segment, and we're not really competitive at the moment," the vice-president of brand and marketing at Mitsubishi Australia, Paul Unerkov, tells Carsguide. 

"We don't want it at the Lancer price, so we're going to have to be down under $15,000 to be competirive in that area. It's the segment of the market that's growing." 

The Mirage will replace the existing underdone Colt, which needed a major price cut to get it moving in Australia. Unerkov believes reintroducing the Mirage name will work well, although the new car is a four-door hatch and not like the compact coupe that previously wore the badge.

"The last time we have the Mirage was back with the coupe. They stopped at the same time, in 2006," he says. "It is a global name. It will be Mitsubishi Mirage, just that. We're really happy about that because it has a good name and there are a lot of happy owners." 

Unerkov says the car at the Tokyo show has a 1.0-litre engine but he is not sure how the car will be powered in Australia. We're just looking at the different variants, it hasn'been decided. "We'll keep that in our hat.

You just about know everything else today. They're only launching the one-litre here in Tokyo." But he is bullish about the car's chances. "It will be about this time next year, 12 months or so. It's on schedule. "It's a four-door at this stage. There may be other variants, but it's that initially."