Ralliart drivetrain for Outlander

Mitsubishi is currently conducting a study into a Ralliart-based Outlander. A high-performance derivative of the compact SUV (more here) would add incremental sales to the total -- and a potentially lucrative increment at that.

Looking at whether such a vehicle would be viable in the local market is Chris Maxted, MMAL's Manager of Product Strategy for Passenger Cars.

"It may be available out of Japan," Maxted told the Carsales Network.

"It's like a Super All-Wheel Control system that may go into Outlander. It's a matter of whether that's suitable for our market."

"Whether that vehicle -- if you pull it in -- is going to sell you 10 a month, is it worth the marketing effort or is that segment actually bigger? We've got to do a bit more digging to find that out," says Maxted. So the Ralliart Outlander is not definite for Australia, but it's not even concrete for the rest of the world yet.

As an engineering project, the Ralliart Outlander wouldn't be one of the harder tasks ever undertaken by Mitsubishi Motors Corporation. The SUV shares its platform with the Lancer, which has just been released locally with Ralliart mechanicals -- and the Outlander is a 4x4, so the hurdles faced are not insurmountable.

What is causing Mitsubishi pause for thought is whether the car could capture enough of the market to make the exercise worthwhile. It's a case of "whether that segment really wants that", according to Robert Chadwick, Mitsubishi's local Manager for Corporate Communications.

Mitsubishi could choose one of two directions for a Ralliart Outlander. It could be a mountain goat with tonnes of useable torque for shinnying up grades that would be impassable for the standard Outlander and powering around dirt corners like a family-oriented WRC car -- something a little like the Subaru Forester XT or Toyota RAV4 V6.

Or it could be a premium vehicle with some of the characteristics of an SUV, but intended more as a bahnstormer -- like the Ford Territory Turbo or a BMW X6.

How a Ralliart Outlander would be aimed at the market is one of the principal issues to be worked out from the current study, says Chadwick.

"Still to be determined, that's one of the study items," he says.

"Where do you position that, what price do you get it, is there a market, is there a [sales] volume?

"They're keen on it," Chadwick says of parent company MMC and the Ralliart Outlander, "but at the moment, it's still a study."

Of course, there's no reason Mitsubishi couldn't hedge its bets with an Outlander for both ends of the market: one for the offroaders with the Ralliart Lancer's single-scroll turbocharger and Evo VIII-based drivetrain components or one appealing to road/track users and featuring the current Lancer Evo's uprated engine and underpinnings.

But would buyers pay around $60,000 for an Outlander, no matter how accomplished?

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