Death to the Infidels!

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Rope-Pusher
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Death to the Infidels!

Post by Rope-Pusher »

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. plans to kill its current lineup of U.S.-made vehicles, including the Eclipse sporty car and Endeavor crossover, over the next three years and switch to producing global vehicles at its Illinois plant, partly to target export markets.

The current nameplates will be phased out by 2014 as part of the carmaker's “Jump 2013” mid-term business plan unveiled Thursday by president Osamu Masuko.

Mitsubishi's factory in Normal, Ill., its only U.S. assembly plant, will pick up new models based on the platform underpinning the Outlander crossover, Outlander Sport small crossover and Lancer sedan. The company plans to announce early next month what model will debut there.

Discontinuing the Eclipse, Eclipse Spyder, Endeavor and Galant sedan is an element of Mitsubishi's plan to build on the company's 3 percent U.S. sales increase last year after years of steady decline. Despite losing the four models from its local lineup, Masuko predicted U.S. sales and production would rise as the company ramps up the new vehicle family.



Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/2011012 ... z1Bd4hKY8E
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LHOswald
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Re: Death to the Infidels!

Post by LHOswald »

maybe they should make them reliable while they're at it too
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Re: Death to the Infidels!

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LHOswald wrote:maybe they should make them reliable while they're at it too
I didn't know a lot about MMC when I visited their place in Okazaki, but I found out that they had a different team of engineers working on the cars they made in Illinois. I would have assumed that even if the cars were styled uniquely for the North American market, they would have had enough common parts with cars built in Japan that one big team would have just worked on all their models (at least for the powertrain and chassis engineering)
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LHOswald
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Re: Death to the Infidels!

Post by LHOswald »

so what your saying is that their cars are japanese in origin but almost completely american designed\engineered?
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Rope-Pusher
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Re: Death to the Infidels!

Post by Rope-Pusher »

LHOswald wrote:so what your saying is that their cars are japanese in origin but almost completely american designed\engineered?
No, but designed by a separate team of Japanese engineers from the ones that design their other cars. I met some of them in Japan, but it seems, by their English, that they spend a good amount of time in Illinois.
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Re: Death to the Infidels!

Post by theholycow »

LHOswald wrote:maybe they should make them reliable while they're at it too
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