Mitsubishi May Finally Have a Way Out

It has become obvious that Mitsubishi needs help in a big way. Not only has this brand been diminishing over the past several years, but they have now reported they have false fuel economy numbers which has led to a distrust of their models. While Mitsubishi itself has a huge stake in the world in more ways than just as an automotive company the automotive part of the company is in serious trouble and without a plan or help they may have to close down this part of the company. Thankfully it appears there may be help on its way.

This new savior of the longstanding Japanese company is a direct rival of Mitsubishi; Nissan. Nissan is reportedly looking to purchase as much as forty percent of Mitsubishi Motors for a cost of $1.84 billion which would help Mitsubishi in many ways. This would begin a relationship of creating an automotive group in Japan that would hopefully offer models that carry either or both names in different ways and give Mitsubishi the breathing room needed to be a company that is admired and trusted once again; at least some time after they clear up this scandal.

The scandal of the falsification of the fuel economy numbers goes back at least 25 years. While there are still investigators looking into how deep this scandal reaches the estimated cost to Mitsubishi is already as high as $1 billion. This scandal may not be as extensive as the one from Volkswagen, but the fact that there are stricter rules governing fuel efficiency makes for a scandal that has led to the overconsumption of gasoline for nearly a quarter of a century. This from a brand that we trusted as one of the makers of some of the most fuel efficient vehicles on the road today means there is certainly going to be a price to pay.

Once the word got out about this scandal the already plummeting orders for the Mitsubishi models dropped even further. The stock shares have decreased in value by 43 percent since the reveal of this cheating scandal. For some reason Mitsubishi Motors had remained separate from the Mitsubishi group in this scandal and has not reached out to gain any assistance, expecting to be able to handle the problem using the resources on hand already. Does this seem like an intelligent way to go about taking care of such a large scandal?

The answer to this question depends upon how you look at the landscape. By keeping the rest of Mitsubishi out of the mix the other assets of the group are not affected. This would be completely the opposite of what Volkswagen has done as they pooled resources and made plans across the twelve brands in order to create a solution that could work. Possibly this partnership with Nissan will be the way Mitsubishi is able to overcome this scandal and gain a partner in the automotive world that will be able to help the company regain trust in the products and start to grow again.

The reason this scandal even came to light was because Nissan found the discrepancy during the testing of the Mitsubishi mini car that was a joint venture. This discovery by Nissan led to a more in depth investigation into the problem to learn what other issues were present. Mitsubishi has already announced it would reimburse Nissan for this problem and then they will have to begin to address the rest of the models that have been falsely reported for the past 25 years. Possibly the partnership with Nissan can result in a better Mitsubishi product that has the fuel numbers accurate in a car that carries some of the Nissan style that we seem to love.