Current Mitsubishi ASX to live on for a while yet

Mitsubishi Motors Australia is no closer to announcing a replacement for its 14-year-old ASX small SUV, which remains a popular choice with local consumers despite being largely unchanged since its release in 2010.

According to the brand’s CEO, Shaun Westcott, Mitsubishi will continue producing and selling the aging model since it still has a strong fanbase.

“I've been in this job probably five years now and I've had journalists telling me for the last four or five years that car’s dead, that car’s done, that car’s finished,” he told carsales at the national media launch of the new 2024 Mitsubishi Pajero Sport.

“Unfortunately, consumers – who we are really interested in – love it, and they’re still buying it.

“In fact, I was in NSW on Friday last week and we had a dealer conference there and the dealers are going, ‘can you give us more ASX? We can sell everything you can get your hands on’.

“So other than to say that it’s the right product, the right car for the market; the market loves it, and we will continue producing it.”

The revelation comes almost 12 months after the Japanese carmaker said a decision on an ASX successor was imminent, however, it now appears internal discussions are still ongoing, with the ASEAN-focused Xforce having essentially been ruled out of contention to due to ‘legal and government’ regulations.

Word is the futuristic SUV would require significant re-engineering in order to meet the expectations of Australian customers, which Westcott said have been “trained” to expect nothing less than a five-star ANCAP safety rating.

That would make the Xforce much more expensive than the current ASX range, which opens from just under $24,490 plus on-road costs for the GS manual and tops out at $35,240 for the Exceed automatic.

“The Xforce is a really good car,” Westcott said.

“The challenge that we have with Xforce is the Australian Design Rules (ADR) and also ANCAP, which have very specific and unique requirements for Australia, which [means] if we were to sell that car in Australia in its current form, it would probably not make a five-star ANCAP rating and Australians have been taught, or trained, or accept, or demand, or whatever the right word you want to use, expect to have a five-star car.”

“We could re-engineer that car, but it’s going to require some fairly significant investment, which would be unique to Australia, and that, of course, means consumers have to pay at the end of the day.”

A re-badged version of the Renault Captur is another model touted as a potential ASX successor, while a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) small SUV is also on the cards.

Despite falling behind compact rivals like the MG ZS, Hyundai Kona, and GWM Haval Jolion on the sales charts, Mitsubishi’s ASX sales are up year-on-year, with 9104 examples having been delivered so far this year ending September, marking a 32 per cent increase compared to the same period last year.

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