Ask anyone who’s been watching and they’ll probably tell you both Mitsubishi and Suzuki are living on borrowed time in the U.S. market.
Pick either brand. You’ll find a shrinking lineup and diminishing market share that both bode poorly for any future against strengthening automakers like Hyundai and Kia. Despite being in the midst of a growing industry, up 14 percent, Mitsubishi’s sales have suffered 29 percent through July with a total of 37,067 units. Suzuki claimed less than half of that with 15,260 cars sold, but also only dropped 4 percent.
In either brand’s case, there’s trouble brewing. Suzuki’s product range only includes the Kizashi sedan, Grand Vitara SUV, Equator pickup, and SX4 subcompact as a hatchback, sedan or crossover. While that’s probably a variety competent enough to keep strong products and their brand alive, that isn’t the case with Suzuki’s dated fleet.
Significantly worse, Mitsubishi will offer a restyled Outlander next summer and a plug-in hybrid version of the SUV in 2014, but that seems to be the extent of its product updates. Worse yet, the brand has axed four of its U.S.-built cars: the Eclipse, Eclipse Spyder, Galant sedan and Endeavour crossover.
Despite suffering sales of an obviously aged product line, both brands are insisting that they have a future in North America – but it’s hard to see.
“You can rest assured that our long-term future product plan will consist of introducing numerous new models in the global marketplace that … will be perfectly suited for the U.S. marketplace as well,” Mitsubishi spokesman Roger Yasukawa told Automotive News. “The U.S. is a very important market for Mitsubishi Motors and we will continue to monitor the U.S. market demand and trends to input toward our long range product plan.”
[Source: Automotive News]