The Mitsubishi Pajero, one of the Japanese carmaker’s most popular and long-standing SUVs, will soon reach its finish line. This sad news comes as Mitsubishi Motors Corporation announces plans to downsize its operations further in the coming years.
According to a Nikkei Asian Review report, Mitsubishi will reveal its midterm management plan on July 27, and part of this plan is the cutting of fixed costs by around 100 billion Japanese yen (P46 billion). To achieve this, the company will shut down its Pajero Manufacturing plant by 2023. This plant is based in the Gifu Prefecture in Sakahogi and currently produces the Delica, the Outlander, and the Pajero.
Mitsubishi is expected to reassign the 900 employees from this plant, while production of the Delica and Outlander will likely be relocated to the company’s other facilities in Japan. As for the Pajero, the carmaker will cease its production by 2021.
The plant accounted for 10% of Mitsubishi’s overall domestic production in FY2019, producing 63,000 vehicles in total. It will be the first domestic Mitsubishi plant to shut down since operations of the Ooe plant in the Aichi Prefecture capital of Nagoya were terminated in 2001.
This is really it, then. We already bid farewell to the Pajero here in our market a few years back, but this time, it’s really goodbye for Mitsubishi’s iconic nameplate. Thoughts, readers?
