Mitsubishi closes in on sales record

Steadily growing this year, the Japanese maker has been overtaking traditional segment leaders on its way to becoming the fourth best-selling brand in the market year-to-date.

It has had a stellar year in what was otherwise a slow grind of sales across the market. With burgeoning demand for SUVs and light commercial vehicle demand, Mitsubishi has overtaken old Australian stalwarts Holden and Ford on the sales chart.

It comes as a hit to the old red and blue teams that previously enjoyed some of their best success with locally-built Commodore and Falcon sedans. Mitsubishi itself was a local builder, constructing the Magna sedan in Adelaide that helped it reach its best-selling year in 1998, but it looks to surpass that number with a line-up of SUVs and LCVs that strike a chord with new car buyers.

“We’re up 8.4 per cent year to date, while the market is down 7.8 per cent November to November, so we’ve done pretty well,” said Mitsubishi Australia chief operating officer Tony Principe.

“We’re sitting in number four position and last year we were number six behind both Ford and Holden and we’ve got a pretty healthy gap now over those two.

“The SUV mix has become the preferred vehicle of Australians.”

Preparing itself for a high-riding future, Mitsubishi confirmed the Lancer would be gone by around February and its only small passenger car in the market will be the Mirage, which Mitsubishi is rumoured to turn into a crossover.

“We’ve finally seen a bit of a flattening in the passenger vehicle mix since a downturn in sales. It has stabilised there at 32 per cent,” said Principe.

“We think next year passenger sales will probably keep dropping a little bit.”

It has been 20 years since Mitsubishi recorded its best year of sales in history, selling 81,651 units in 1998, and 2018 looks likely to beat that.

“This year we’ve only got one month left and we’re brave enough to give you an estimate," Principe said.

“Our previous sales record was in 1998 with 81,651. We are sitting on 77,638 [year-to-date] and we hope to get around six to seven thousand [sales] in December. It will take us to somewhere around 83,000 which will be an all-time record for us in Australia.”

The sales boom has been absolutely buoyed by a pick-up in the SUV and LCV market, with key sales heads being the Triton ute and ASX SUV, further supplemented by the Outlander and new Eclipse Cross family cars.

“The trend from passenger towards SUV and LCV has been on-going and accelerated [lately] and this year we are sitting at over 65 per cent SUV/LCV [sales over passenger vehicles]," added Principe.

Proving how strong it is in the SUV space, Mitsubishi is closing in on Mazda – which currently leads the mid-size SUV market with its CX-5 - to be the number two brand in Australia for high-riding wagons.

“In the SUV area we are the number three brand, and we’re up 12.5 per cent year to date. We’re in the number three spot behind Mazda and we’ve closed that gap - we’re neck and neck with them. They are only a few hundred units ahead of us compared to last year when they were about six thousand ahead.”

And the future for Mitsubishi’s dual-cab ute market success looks set to continue. While sitting firmly in number three behind big sellers the Toyota HiLux and Ford Ranger, the Triton overtook Holden Colorado on the ladder this year and a big refresh early next year with a much tougher look and segment-first safety could see it gain further ground on the two leaders.

“We’re 9.2 per cent [ahead of last year for LCV sales] and we are pretty well entrenched in that number three spot. Last year we were number three behind Holden but as you can see the gap between us and Holden is quite substantial now,” said Principe.