Anyone who would consider buying MMNA would have to take into account the future warranty costs they would be taking on, in the price they offer for the company. I have no idea if it will sell. If MMNA is losing money hand over fist with NA operations, why would anyone else think they could operate it profitably?

I will probably be at Spring Mtn. next month. It's a fun event because you stay in a hotel casino and can drive on the track all day and gamble all night.

 

MMNA is consistently lose money, it's not surprising. No company will touch them

 

I actually know the private equity firm in question fairly well that may be "purchasing" MMNA. It wouldn't be a company that assumes the risk of MMNA, but rather a liquidation to pay down its debts and cease selling cars here-- i.e. cutting losses once and for all. For evo owners, this maybe very good news, as our car values might ascend. But overall, very very bad for Mitsubishi owner's here in North America. Please watch this closely.

 

Hypothetically, if Mitsu bugs out of the U.S., does that mean no more Mitsu cars will be made domestically? The Evo is almost entirely made in Japan. Will they still get shipped here? Would all Mitsu cars be made over there and brought here?

 

with all the good press the evo got this car will be collector status garontee. this car is destined to be the one kids talk about 20 years from now. a true cult clasic for the car world.

 

I would buy a Mitsubishi dealership if one was offered..

The compnay won't pull out and if they do, the new owners will see to it that it becomes successful again.

 

hmm.. i'm unemployed but i did once get paid 6.50 an hour working at subway... i'll think about buying mitsu

 

This has "disaster" written all over it. I would not be surprised to become an orphaned Mits owner.

- Turn-around specialist Finnbar O'Neill quit
- Sales have been down, on average, by over 37% !!!
- Evo sales are down by 10% !
- The all-new Galant has sales 40% lower than the old Galant.

http://media.mitsubishicars.com/deta...41275&mime=ASC

The Japanese management has expressed support for Mitsubishi in Japan, but not for MMNA.

Take a walk thru the press releases and you'll see fatal issues acknowledged by MMNA. Mitsubishi sold 256,810 vehicles total - Honda sold 386,770 Accords alone in 2004.

 

Edit january sales sucked

34% increase in Dec over the month of November
Galant sales up 99% from November and 54% from last December
Outlander and Endeavor had increases as well

 

Some of those stats I suspect line up with certain events: new model debuts, old models no longer sold, intros that grab only a few sales days of the month, etc.

To help take some of that out, I try to look at December's stats and then look at the CYTD stats - that should help smooth out some of the anomalies that can occur from one-time events. The month-to-month comparisons can be meaningless - better to look at the longer term trends, and unfortunately, they aren't good. Not that I want MMNA to die off, but it's just tough to tell whether that light at the end of the tunnel is the sun or the train's headlight.

 

What about the warranty obligations of MMNA, not for 10,000 modded EVOs, but the 500,000 Galants, Eclipses, Monteros, etc.? Anyone buyin MMNA is stuck with the warranty obligation unless the US unit is put through bankruptcy, which is an expensive and time consuming process.

 

this reminds me of the great crash back in '29. everyone started getting scared that the stock market would crash... so people were trading accordingly, which caused it to crash. this is just going to scare away more potential mitsu customers.

 

Richard: I can't answer your response directly but I will use Daewoo as the litmus test since they were the last manufacturer to depart from North American auto sales.

Here is a very interesting link to lookover:

http://www.portlandphoenix.com/archi...at_daewoo.html

It seems that with the exception of Hyundai, a long warranty and free maintenance (less luxury brands) might be a death knell since neither has to be honored following a simple Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Technically GM in buying a large portion of automotive assets from Daewoo at firesale prices were to honor Daewoo warranties but there are thousands of lawsuits on the books indicating otherwise.

As for those arguing that US is the largest auto market in the world and Mitsubishi would never depart-- there are two things to consider:

1) Mitsubishi is a publically traded company, which means the most important metric for the company is profitability. Continuing to lose billions of dollars, even in the largest auto market is reason enough to cease operations.

2) Several auto manufacturers closed up shop in the 1980s here and have gone on to become very profitable automakers in their home markets and less competetive foreign marketplaces. A good example would be Peugeot.

And for the record Mitsubishi is shopping for buyers. They may deny it in press release after press release but only to keep potential buyers from running for the fences. It's also going to be a tough sell to any private equity or LBO firm as the current warranty period stretches 7 years for recently sold cars. That is a lot of warranty risk and cost for any firm to assume.

 

I wonder if Mr. Masuko would let me have a turn at running the company....I certainly couldnt screw things up any worse than the monkeys he has now.

 

bump