The Mitsubishi email invitation to the Outlander debut featured a photo of a huge Amazon shipping box in a garage. The automaker has not announced any other plans to work with Amazon to market the Outlander or any of its other models.
As part of a larger effort to renew its lineup, Mitsubishi has launched a completely new version, one of its most popular models in the United States. The new Outlander is slightly larger than before and has new grille, headlight and tail light designs that emphasize the additional width of the SUV.
Mitsubishi once had a strong performance-based brand identity and enthusiastic base, but that was a long time ago, said Akshay Anand, an auto industry analyst at Kelley Blue Book.
“The 2021 Mitsubishi is not the 1995 Mitsubishi, when they had a little more behind the brand,” said Anand.
The partnership with Amazon, he said, may help to draw the necessary attention to a major brand launch.
Mitsubishi spokesman Jeremy Barnes pointed to the new Outlander and other redesigned and updated models as evidence that the brand is changing.
“We will have one of the most revamped showroom formations in the industry in the coming months,” he said.
Since 2016, Mitsubishi has been part of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, a group in which each of the three automakers has a stake in others. The companies cooperate in the engineering of new models. The 2022 Outlander is Mitsubishi’s first model designed and developed in cooperation with the alliance.
The new SUV, which has three rows of seats, is wider and more spacious than the current Outlander SUV. The interior finishing options will include two-tone leather treatments and diamond stitched leather patterns. The Outlander has a 2.5-liter gasoline engine and a continuously variable automatic transmission designed to function as an eight-speed transmission under certain conditions.
The Outlander will be available in both front and all-wheel drive versions.
The new SUV will also have a set of driver assistance technologies, including active assistance to maintain lane, recognition of traffic signs, which can read speed limit signs and display them on the vehicle, and Trailer Stability Assistance which helps to keep the vehicle in control while towing a trailer.
The Outlander 2022 will go on sale in April, with prices starting at around $ 26,000.