When the tally for the automotive sales across America during the first quarter of the year came in, we found out – quite unsurprisingly – that one Asian carmaker barely reached 28k deliveries during the months of January, February, and March of 2024.
Unlike Toyota, which is battling for supremacy with General Motors, and there were less than 30k sales between them, Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. (MMNA) is but a pale shadow of shadow of its former self. And I didn't write a typo; I just wanted to emphasize that it's so bad that many fans could easily fear that Mitsubishi could retreat from North America as early as the end of the current year if something doesn't change.
Sure, their sales jumped almost 38 percent if you're looking for the silver lining – but that's hardly a consolation when they only delivered 28,403 vehicles! Anyway, just like with other small Japanese manufacturers, Mitsubishi still has an active base of fans – they just don't have good vehicles aside from the Outlander to choose from.
And no, people don't really care that the base Mirage starts from just $16,695 or that it's among America's best gas mileage cars – they just don't want to drive something with a tiny three-cylinder, a plasticky interior, and the overall looks of an egg on wheels. The G4 isn't cooler either, the Outlander Sport is so obsolete that even the elderly would make fun of it, and the Eclipse Cross is so wrong on so many levels I would need a book to write all the cons about it.
However, people still care about Mitsubishi – including from across the imaginative realm of digital car content creators. More precisely, this virtual artist, known as Theottle on social media, has recently resorted to CGI slicing and dicing the Renault 5 E-Tech into changing the Mirage's fate. Sure, it wouldn't be as cheap as today, but at least no one would make fun of you for driving one, not even the geeks.
The French automaker is letting Nissan get a hold of the 5 E-Tech all-electric retro hatchback for the upcoming Nissan Micra (March) version – so he thought, why not the Mitsubishi Mirage, too? After all, the new Mitsubishi Colt is a rebadged Renault Clio in Europe. As such, he took the French hatchback, now with all-electric power, and quickly yet arduously reskinned it as a next-generation Mitsubishi Mirage EV in his latest behind-the-scenes making-of video.
So, what do you think – should Mitsubishi take the badge engineering process to the next level and feature the Mitsubishi Mirage based on the newly revived Renault 5 E-Tech, especially since this unofficial version is also intended as a tribute to the first-generation Colt/Mirage from 1978?
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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