In other recent news, it has now been revealed that Nissan has signed a deal to take a 34 per cent stake in Mitsubishi Motors for 237 billion yen (or about £1.5 billion).
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The alliance will extend an existing partnership between the two, under which they have jointly collaborated for the past five years, the companies said in a joint statement.
Under the deal, Nissan and MMC have agreed to cooperate in areas including purchasing, common vehicle platforms, technology-sharing, joint plant utilization and growth markets.
However, Osamu Masuko, chief executive of Mitsubishi Motors, admitted: “It will not be easy to restore trust”.
There is still a process of a full due-diligence examination of Mitsubishi before the deal is completed so it’s not a done deal just yet, but Ghosn said he was confident its problems are understood.
“We believe this will be a win-win situation. Mitsubishi is going to change by itself”, Ghosn said. “We need your continued support and guidance”. It is expected to close by the end of the year, it said. And it was Nissan, its partner in that microcar venture, that caught Mitsubishi in the act. It was Nissan employees who took note of the fuel economy discrepancy when the brand’s engineers tested the Nissan Dayz, which is a rebadged version of Mitsubishi’s eK wagon.
Mitsubishi is battling with a decline in sales and the increasing costs due to it April admission to falsifying data that related to the fuel economy of four of its mini-car models that were sold across Japan.
Mitsubishi Motors’ share price surged on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on the news before the two companies made the announcement. More than you might think. Once the deal is finalized in late May, Nissan can effectively run full throttle with Mitsubishi vehicles into burgeoning global markets – likely under the newly reinstated Datsun economy brand. Nissan will have to help Mitsubishi recover from its scandal.
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There’s also the lucrative microcar partnership between the two companies in Japan, and the fact that both companies can pool resources on electrification. Added together, the group would have been the fourth-largest automaker previous year, trailing third-place General Motors by only a small margin.
