Mitsubishi and Nissan Could Build the Frontier's Successor Together
Mitsubishi is not a brand at the forefront of the American consumer's mind. The company makes just three distinct lines of cars for the U.S., and only one has received any updates in the 2020s. Mitsubishi is also one of the few brands in the country that offers a seven-seat plug-in hybrid, the Outlander PHEV. That makes the Nissan-controlled company a natural partner in its would-be parent company's plans to electrify its lineup. Those plans will reportedly include a new mid-sized truck, and that truck might even get sold as a Mitsubishi.
That report comes from Automotive News, which claims that the first partnership on U.S. products between Mitsubishi and Nissan will begin with a simple trade of electrification technologies. Under that proposed plan, Nissan will sell a PHEV based on Mitsubishi's system while Mitsubishi will sell a fully electric car based on the Nissan architecture currently used in the Ariya. The more interesting collaboration is the truck the two could develop together, one that could also spawn plug-in hybrid and EV variants.
According to the report, that truck would be produced in Mexico as the successor to Nissan's relatively recently updated Frontier. The same development could also spawn a Mitsubishi-branded truck, the brand's first in the U.S. since it briefly sold a badge-engineered Dodge Dakota as the Mitsubishi Raider in the late 2000s.
Mitsubishi sells pick-ups in other markets, including in Mexico where it sells the fifth-generation Triton under the L200 badge. That truck was built in alliance with the former Fiat Chrysler, which briefly sold it as the Fullback and, in some markets, as the Ram 1200. The American market never received any of those models or the sixth-generation Triton that debuted last year, but this new partnership could produce gas-powered, hybrid, and all-electric successors for American Mitsubishi dealers in the near future.
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