The Renault Nissan Alliance, featuring Mitsubishi.
Now that Mitsubishi has been officially inducted into the Renault-Nissan Alliance, there’s clearly going to be some cross-pollination in the same vein that we’ve been seeing for years between a certain French and Japanese manufacturer.
Back in October 2016, Nissan acquired a 34 percent stake in Mitsubishi Motors.
First on the order, or at least near the top of the list, is the a new pickup. Trouble is, both the Nissan Navara and Mitsubishi Triton are still relatively fresh (both launched in 2014), but that doesn’t mean some streamlining efforts won’t be a lucrative move to save costs while concurrently creating a better product.
It has now been confirmed that the next-generation Triton, due out somewhere around 2020, will indeed share quite a fair bit in common with the next Nissan Navara. There’s no reason why this cocktail of Japanese pickups should have its ingredients limited, meaning there could be a common platform, powertrain, electronics.
Mitsubishi Motors’ Chief Operating Officer Trevor Mann told local media that the company has already established an internal roadmap as to where both the utes will end up in the coming years, and how their commonalities will benefit the pair.
While this level of a tie-in could dilute their respective identities, it’s unlikely that it the similarities will run too deep. They will be differentiated, with most markets to be selling both models simultaneously as they do now, with each speaking to a different kind of buyer.
Though it’s still undefined which of the pair will receive the the higher priority here, it seems probable that the Navara will be developed as the template unto which the next Triton will emerge as a move in the opposite direction could have an adverse effect on other manufacturers who use the Nissan pickup as foundations for their own load luggers: the Renault Alaskan and upcoming Mercedes-Benz X-Class, specifically.
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