Mitsubishi Triton Ralliart a long way from being green-lit

Mitsubishi Australia has stopped short of confirming a Mitsubishi Triton with Ralliart badges will be sold Down Under.

The brand has been sorely missing a tough truck to provide its top-selling vehicle, the Mitsubishi Triton, with a flagship ute to take on the likes of the Toyota HiLux Rugged X and Nissan Navara PRO-4X Warrior.

And it’s now looking increasingly likely a Ralliart-branded ute may not be offered in Oz.

The tone of Mitsubishi execs suggest a resurrected Ralliart brand may need to mature before the Australian subsidiary makes any commitments, but a locally-developed tough truck via Melbourne-based TMR (Team Mitsubishi Ralliart) could still be in the running.

“We’d love to see Ralliart come back, but if it comes back to Australia we’d want to see it brought back in a proper way,” said Mitsubishi Australia’s product strategy boss, Owen Thomson.

“So we’re very cautious about the way we’ll bring Ralliart back.”

Earlier in the year when Mitsubishi’s global CEO Takao Kato stated he would resurrect the Ralliart name, it brought tears of joy to long-suffering fans who have dreams of reborn WRX STI-slaying Lancer Evo.

But it seems unlikely the reborn Ralliart name will challenge Toyota GR or Hyundai N performance cars.

Thomson said there was hesitance to jump right in “because it is a brand that has heritage and there is memory in the market there about what that means”.

“We are aware that the parent company is working on Ralliart but we need to see the details of that before we say anything appropriate for the Australian market,” he said.

Whatever eventuates, the Mitsubishi Triton ute won’t get a hero model until the next-generation vehicle arrives, which won’t be until 2022 at the earliest.

That vehicle will share its underpinnings with the next Nissan Navara, and as previously reported it’s expected to spawn a 4x4 dual-cab tough truck previewed by the Aussie-developed Triton Absolute concept ute.

“Our core focus at the moment is the next-generation Triton, in terms of the product planning job and how long those things take, that’s our focus at the moment,” said Thomson.

“All I can say about next-generation Triton is we’re still very much a part of the conversation with the parent company about that vehicle, because we are an important market globally for that car.”

Thomson wouldn’t say when the new Triton will launch in Australia, and despite local testing being delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he said the vehicle’s launch schedule is on track.

“We have a pretty clear timeline internally on that vehicle,” he said.

“[And] We’re pretty confident MMC [Mitsubishi Motors Corporation] will do some market testing here sometime when circumstances permit.”