Mitsubishi may bet on small car for U.S.
Though struggling to battle back from the brink, Mitsubishi is currently researching whether or not the U.S. market is on the verge of a paradigm shift away from large vehicles and into smaller ones. If it's satisfied that consumer tastes are shrinking, the Japanese company may bring one of its JDM B-Class models to the states, specifically the Colt hatchback (RallyArt model shown). If the case can be made for annual sales between 50,000 and 70,000 units, we may even see the Colt being produced in Mitsubishi's Normal, IL plant where the Eclipse, Endeavor and Galant are currently built.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John Riley 11:05PM (12/18/2005)
I think small cars sales will improve, but so will the supply. The Yaris and the Korean cars are there already, and the Honda Fit will be there shortly.
Meanwhile, I don't think the market will be _that_ big in the US. People aren't going to go from SUV's to B class cars in large numbers. Just getting people to go from SUV's to mid-size cars would be huge, and would give people, what, roughly 1/3 better mileage?
Bringing back mid-size station wagons would give much of the funcitionality that people are actually using. (Wonder how the Dodge is doing?)
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Glenn Arlt 11:05PM (12/18/2005)
Having lived in the UK, I can tell you that most American's preconceived ideas about interior room are flat wrong. Hatchbacks will come back in a big way if people start to realize how flexible the interiors are - such as B-class cars. My Prius is a great example.
I'm hearing stories that people are moving from SUVs all the way down to C-class (i.e. Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Hyundai Elantra, etc.) instead of D-class cars or minivans. I'm amazed. Perhaps those folks who've gone with D-class cars in the past (Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Hyundai Sonata) will now be considering B-class cars, for all I know?!
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Glenn Arlt 11:05PM (12/18/2005)
By the way, the 2004-2005-2006 Prius is a D-class car (for interior room), and similar to C-class cars (exterior size).
I hope Mitsubishi bring in the Colt. It was a good name (which they whored off to Dodge for years before they even brought in cars with their own name on it).
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squog 11:05PM (12/18/2005)
Having lived in the UK, I can tell you that small cars might be good for commuting, but in the USA a family needs at least one big car.
One more observation from living in UK and a few other European countries. Many people there buy small cars because they cannot afford to buy a bigger one.
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Glenn Arlt 11:06PM (12/18/2005)
Squog, That's why a Prius is such a great car. It has a more-or-less full-sized interior with room almost identical to a Ford Crown Victoria, and much more flexibility for carrying items instead of people if required.
Brits are down-sizing from D-class type Ford company cars (company cars making up 60% of the new car sales there) to C-class BMW 3-series vehicles (upmarket brands, smaller size). For personal use buyers, most Brit cars are "MPV's" now - including (surprisingly) the Kia Sedona minivan (albiet with a big four cylinder turbo-diesel instead of a gashoggish V6) which offers huge value for money, but the best selling car category in the UK right now seems to be vehicles much like the Mazda 5 mini-mpv (with engines from 1.4 litres to 2.0 litre diesels). Lots of room, interior flexibility (tall "hatchbacks" is what they are) small exteriors, good milage.
Maybe Americans will catch on, maybe we won't. Mitsubishi should also consider importing their Grandis mini-van. They were pretty well pushed out of the market by part-ownership of Chrysler for decades (in plain English, I'd bet that Chrysler forbad them from importing minivans which might compete with the Chrysler/Dodge) - now that's over, they need to bring them in. Especially since Mazda is discontinuing their MPV series in favor of the smaller 5 "mpv" type vehicle.
In the UK it isn't the purchase price which puts off private buyers, it's running costs. When I was in the UK in June on "holiday", diesel was the equivalent of $6.25 per U.S. gallon, "petrol" (gasoline) was $6. It got as high as $7.47 a gallon for gas when our prices spiked.
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Joseph Willemssen 11:06PM (12/18/2005)
Some facts.
1) The biggest sales segment for vehicles in the US is compact cars.
2) More than 95% of households have five people or fewer.
3) The average occupancy of a vehicle is about 1.3, and during weekdays it's even lower.
4) It's far cheaper to rent a larger vehicle for the occasional need (and nice to change up vehicles in the meantime), or use an additional vehicle, than it is to overbuy a single vehicle, which the vast majority of people do.
5) Steve Case recently bought controlling interest in one of the two largest carsharing firms and put Iacocca on its board. They plan to have 1 million members within 5 years, from about 40,000 now. Both Flexcar (the company he bought) and its biggest competitor, Zipcar, are growing by leaps and bounds.
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Doogs 11:06PM (12/18/2005)
"I'm hearing stories that people are moving from SUVs all the way down to C-class (i.e. Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Hyundai Elantra, etc.) instead of D-class cars or minivans."
Glenn - I'm one of those - traded in my Xterra for a Protege5. I didn't even look at mid-size, in large part because sedans aren't my thing, and the 5-doors in that class are thin on the ground, and either boring or too rich for my blood.
Compact wagons and hatches seem to have far more personality, for some reason.
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FiguresLie-LiarsFigure 11:06PM (12/18/2005)
" 3) The average occupancy of a vehicle is about 1.3, and during weekdays it's even lower. "
So why even call it an average then? And who said it's lower during weekdays, the source you pulled this one from or did you just adlib it in?
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Glenn Arlt 11:06PM (12/18/2005)
Joseph's point about averages can be easily understood. The average (i.e. overall average, if you must have it explained with two words when one should do) is 1.3 persons per vehicle. Obviously, on the weekends alone, the average is higher - therefore, during the week, if only the 5 days per week were considered, it is obviously therefore - lower.
In plain English, which works well too, almost everyone in the United States commutes to work without carpooling. I'm pretty sure that's the point behind Joseph's statement.
Ergo - people obviously don't need 6000 pound friggin' 10 mile to the gallon 8 passenger SUVs and 5 or 6 passenger trucks to carry their fat asses to work, to use the vernacular.
OK?
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Tag 11:06PM (12/18/2005)
Never going to happen; unless that little guy has 500 horses under the hood. In the US, bigger is better! We'll bitch about gas prices, but popular culture is not ready to accept these things.
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Joseph Willemssen 11:06PM (12/18/2005)
"So why even call it an average then? And who said it's lower during weekdays, the source you pulled this one from or did you just adlib it in?"
Here's the numbers:
Monday..... 1.50
Tuesday..... 1.45
Wednesday..... 1.48
Thursday..... 1.49
Friday..... 1.59
Saturday..... 1.95
Sunday..... 2.06
No direct link, but you can access the database here:
http://nhts.ornl.gov/2001/index.shtml
My estimate was a bit off in terms of precision, but the difference between weekday and weekend (which should be common sense, anyway) is still there.
Figure 8.2 from this page:
http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb24/Edition24_Chapter08.pdf
will show you distribution by trip purpose, as well as the changes from 1977 to 2001.
You can see that for every trip purpose average occupancy has declined, with AVO for commuters at around 1.1 right now. The 1.3 number I was guessing probably came from the 1977 data for home-to-work.
Clear as mud now?
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