Mitsubishi celebrates one million unit sales

Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corporation (MMPC) has crossed a major milestone—a little over 55 years after it commenced operations in the country, the Japanese automaker has breached the 1 million-unit sales mark.

The 1 millionth car—a Mirage hatchback—was delivered to a customer last March.

“Mitsubishi vehicles have developed a solid reputation for quality, design, efficiency, and performance, which has powered us to cross this significant point. As proud as we are of this milestone, the future looks even brighter for MMPC with a host of new, industry-leading products that will continue our tradition of challenging the competition,” believes MMPC President and CEO Mutsuhiro Oshikiri.

Mr. Oshikiri adds that in its 55-year history, MMPC has been a positive force in supplying the vehicle demand of the country.

The remarkable growth of MMPC vehicle sales in the country has been well documented. The company regained its No. 1 position in the Philippine automotive industry in terms of sales for 1998 while in March 2008, the company celebrated its 500,000-unit sales milestone.

In 2010, MMPC ended the year with an impressive 39 percent sales growth as it sold 32,422 units sold and increased its market share to 19.2 percent.

In 2013, MMPC marked its 50th year in the country.

Longest-staying company

As the longest-staying automotive company in the Philippines, MMPC was able to surpass all the challenges including the economic crisis in the ’80s, the Asian crisis in 1997 and also several natural calamities particularly, the Thailand floods of 2011 that disrupted global supply chain.

Today, MMPC is one of the country’s highest volume automotive brands thanks to a wide product line-up of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles (cars, SUVs, pickups and vans).

Perhaps it’s only fitting that a Mirage was MMPC’s 1 millionth unit considering the company has committed to produce 200,000 more units of the subcompact hatchback within six years as one of only two participants in the country’s Comprehensive Automotive Resurgence Strategy or CARS program.

The CARS program was implemented in order to attract new investments, stimulate demand and effectively implement industry regulations that will revitalize the Philippine automotive industry, and develop the country as a regional automotive manufacturing hub.

“At the moment, we are doubling our efforts to push the Mirage model to the domestic market by executing more aggressive marketing campaigns and strategies. We need to trim down costs in order to deal with the high excise tax imposed on motor vehicles and its subsequent impact on retail prices,” explains Oshikiri.

He assures that MMPC is even more determined to continuously achieve higher sales volume despite tough challenges in the industry’s competition and unceasingly provide high quality vehicle line-ups for the Philippine market.