Mitsubishi Motors has said that it may be looking at getting the Delica MPV and the Attrage sedan to India in the next three to four years. In the MPV segment, the Delica would go up against the Toyota Innova, which means that prices might be in the range of Rs 15-20 lakh.
Currently, the Mitsubishi Delica is made in some Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia. In India, the carmaker might look at manufacturing it locally to keep the price tag down.
“...We will have to work hard on pricing and localisation. If we were to import the Delica, it will cost more than Rs 30 lakh, which does not make sense. So, we are always looking at the manufacturing route to reduce costs. Initially, we can look at a localisation of 15-20 percent that can move upwards to 30-40 percent local content, later,” P Vijayan, CEO of HMFCL, told our sister publication Autocar Professional . “But all this is in the evaluation stage at present and plans can change over the next few years,” he added.
However, this is not the first time that Mitsubishi has announced plans of getting a new car here. There were announcements in the past too, which did not materialise.
Last year, Mitsubishi Motors had announced business plans for 2014-16 that revolved around bringing five new models to India. One was the Mirage hatchback that is manufactured in Thailand, but Uttam Bose, managing director of Hindustan Motor Finance Corp (HMFCL), the company that manufactures and markets Mitsubishi cars in India, said that plans of bringing the Mirage were dropped as it wasn't commercially viable and has stiff competition in India.
He, however, did confirm that the Attrage sedan may make its way here by 2017. “Studies are underway and we are working on it, then we will take some decisions." The Attrage will come with a diesel engine mated to a manual gearbox and there will be no automatic option. This year, the company also plans to bring the new Mitsubishi Outlander and Montero SUVs in petrol guise, with both automatic and manual transmission options. The diesel variants will follow next year.
Shobha Mathur