Value focus for Mitsubishi in 2012

Mitsubishi is facing a potential perfect storm in sales terms. With almost a full calendar year ahead of it before important all-new models start to trickle Down Under, the brand has its work cut out for it if it's not to see sales plummet like compatriot Honda.

But company insiders are bullish -- including Vice President of Sales, Anthony Casey. Speaking at this week's rollout of the changes to the marque's model line-up for the Model Year 2012, Casey, told motoring.com.au he was confident the brand could perform well in the year ahead.

This confidence, he contends, is based on the brand and its dealers' ability to sell the "value" within its line-up.

"The plan [in 2012] is to hold ground and then build with new cars..." Casey told motoring.com.au.

"We’ve got [multifranchise] Honda dealers and I’ve had that discussion [re sales numbers] with them and I think certainly that’s not our direction. We had a really good dealer conference last week and we threw some of that stuff on the table... but certainly from our point of view we think we’ve been driven by different agendas than Honda when it made a lot of its decisions.

"Our agenda is certainly very much to stay at six per cent market share [in 2012] and build over and above that as we get some of the new models. And the reality is if [Mitsubishi's Colt replacement] Global Small [Car] was, let’s say, 500-600 sales per month [then] there’s another half per cent that we don’t currently get because Colt’s really fallen in a gap."

Casey said Mitsubishi new-model hiatus was "difficult... but not unprecedented".

"We’ve got some strategies that we want to play out over the next 12 months to try and retain volume.... I think if you look at how we ran out the prior model Lancer, we actually sold more in the last 18 months [of onsale] than we had in the 18 months prior to that... So it’s do-able around a value proposition."

Caseys says Mitsubishi can keep Lancer sales in the 1500-1800 units per month range in 2012.

This year to date Mitsubishi's small car -- available in both sedan and hatch variants -- has sold at an average of just shy of 1600 units per month. He says retaining that momentum is in the brand's sights.

"We’ve got some strategies we want to play [based] around value propositions. The thing is you don’t want to discount the price and you don’t want to be having a $17,000-18,000 Lancer in the marketplace because at some point you have to release a new model and you don’t want to then have a $4000-5000 price walk-up... So the strategy will be around value proposition."

Casey is also confident Mitsubishi's Triton pick-up and cab/chassis range can perform well in showrooms despite the flood of new-generation models in the segment.

"I suppose it’s no different to Lancer really... It’s just a concern you deal with as part of your volume life cycle... You come into your new model and you should be in front of everybody else... By the time you go out the other end you should be behind everybody else and you start again."

But in this arena, Casey contends Triton may have an advantage over the newcomers -- its size. The sales boss says the size increase of the new crop of utes could deter buyers.

"I’m not sure what Ford would tell you but I mean from the outside you look in and say: “Well, they look to be trying to build something that’s going to fit between F-150 and what used to be the old Ranger size”... Whether Australians want to go up to that size or whether they’re happy to get into Triton... That’s a big car already [but] you get in a Ranger it’s a bigger car again."

But will value be the target for Triton's sales strategy in 2012?

Says Casey: "Yeah... You work on the value proposition again and I think we’ve seen that, certainly with Ranger, what they’ve done is their pricing’s gone up quite a bit and that’s traditionally the way new models work."

"We’ve got everything apart from five star [crash rating] and the reality is that you’re not going to get five star based purely on design and this far into a model life you’re not going to make those sort of changes... But having said that I think the car [Triton] is still really competitive."

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