2026 Mitsubishi Triton Raider is not a Navara Warrior clone

With the Mitsubishi Triton and latest Nissan Navara sharing a platform, and Premcar being responsible for the off-road focused Raider and Warrior variants of each, the obvious conclusion is that the two will be identical beyond the badges, but this is apparently not the case. According to Mitsubishi and Premcar, different customer profiles and development objectives have led to unique componentry and settings for the flagship Triton.

Nissan has been adamant that its Warrior intellectual property would remain its own, so when Mitsubishi pulled the covers off the Triton Raider, which not only shares its platform with the Navara but was developed by the same company as well, with a similar off-road focus, the obvious question was: will these two top-flight utes be the same vehicle?

Apparently not, and according to Premcar CEO Bernie Quinn, it all comes down to the customer.

“Bruce (Hampel, Mitsubishi Australia’s general manager of product strategy) flashed up the Mitsubishi pillars: reliable, knowledgeable, capable and sustainable,” he said.

“We take those, we develop a target customer, so it’s representative of the biggest part of the bell curve in terms of the customer.

“From that we develop, ‘what does this customer want from their vehicle and what do they do with their vehicle?’ And then we develop the specification and the tuning of that to suit that customer.

“What that means is the Mitsubishi customer respects the heritage of the rally spirit that’s behind the Mitsubishi brand and also very respectful of the ruggedness and the durability there.

“So we’ve got a car that’s more tuned for higher-speed gravel roads, you know 80-120km/h, but maintaining the reliability and the tow capacity [and] payload, so that formed the target of what we’re trying to achieve.”

Hampel meantime said Mitsubishi’s brief to Premcar “was to deliver best-in-class ride and handling with a unique look that sets the Raider brand expectation”.

“They also needed to achieve the robust requirements demanded of such a partnership from Mitsubishi Motor Corporation’s head office.”

Just how stark the differences between the Mitsubishi Triton Raider and D27 Nissan Navara Warrior will remains to be seen – partly because we haven’t driven them yet and mainly because the production-spec Warrior is yet to be seen.

But it appears the Warrior is being developed with general on- and off-road excellence in mind, while the Raider focusses more on the high-speed gravel roads typically found across much of Australia.

Premcar’s senior engineer manager, Andrew Lynch, elaborated further: “Australia is unique, we’ve got a lot of diverse roads and once you get off the main highway [they] become really broken.

“You can be going out for a family driver and all of a sudden you’re doing three or four hours on a gravel road. So the car needs to be controlled, stable, easily predictable on those sort of roads.”

To achieve this, the Raider employs unique spring and damper settings, redesigned front bump stops for greater high-speed bump control and specially chosen Bridgestone Dueller AT002 tyres.

Pricing is not yet confirmed but the first vehicles are expected to be available in dealers from late May with orders open now, whereas the Warrior will debut later in the year.

Join the conversation at our Facebook page
Or email us at editor@carsales.com.au