Most of you might be familiar with the RalliArt brand. You’ve probably seen the their logo on cars passing by. Maybe, you caught them on a coverages of the WRC (World Rally Championshp). Or, you simply heard of them as special editions of a particular brand of cars.
You see, Ralliart is Mitsubishi’s in-house motorsport and tuning arm. Mainly responsible for the brand’s success in motorsports, Ralliart is being revived from its deep sleep after 11 years of inactivity. At a recent financial earnings announcement in Tokyo, Mitsubishi revealed that the popular sub-brand is going to be revived as a way of strenghtening, what the brand calls, ‘Mitsubishi-ness driving’.
What’s ‘Mitsubushi-ness driving’ you ask? It’s really a pitch to revive the more than a deacade dormant motorsports heritage that brought you world topping handling and performance. Something good enough the win the challenging Paris-Dakar Rally a total of 12 times, also capturing four WRC (World Rally Championship) driver’s titles.
Two models come to mind when you mention Ralliart. The Pajero and the Lancer Evolution nameplates have become the definition of Mitsubishi’s rally efforts. And the results of those efforts has helped them significantly in selling 4WD and AWD models all over the world.
Sadly, in 2005, Mitsubishi decided to pull out of WRC and Dakar races are falling sales during that time and a series of management concerns. Then in 2010, Ralliart withdrew from motorsport involvement and mothballing the sub-brand after a quarter of a century of motorsport develpoment and performance tuning. Falling sales of its performance parts at during those times was the culprit of their shuttering. That being said, the company’s motorsport heritage beats strong at the heart of enthusiasts to this day.
With the revival of the sub-brand, Mitsubishi’s CEO, Takao Kato-san says “For customers who wish to experience our Mitsubishi-ness, we will launch custom-made accessories for our model lineup as well as re-entering motorsport events around the world”
If you expect images of Evo-esque vehicles are in the pipeline, well, sorry to dash your expectations. As per photos from Mitsubishi themselves, sillouettes of upcoming offerings show high-riding crossovers, SUVs and a pickup. It’s not a stretch of the imagination that the Ralliart revival will come from that direction.
As the image shows, new and upcoming generations of the L200/Strada/Triton, Xpander and Montero Sport will be coming in 2022-2023. With the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance in place, the potential of sharing platforms and components is very likely for L200/Strada/Triton and Nissan Navara. The same is expected to apply to the pickup-based Mitsubishi Montero (Pajero) Sport and Nissan Terra.
The new models are expected to have some form of electrification whether it be a mild hybid to a full hybrid. So it wouldn’t be such a stretch for Ralliart visions to grounded (pun intended) in electrification strategies. Rall-e-art perhaps? In more currently related bits, the presentation featured a Mitsubishi L200 decked out in Ralliart livery. And another image giving reference to the words ‘Ralliart Parts’. It is unclear, however, as of this writing if the Ralliart brand will be used solely for performance models, or for upgrade packages for standard Mitsubishi models.
Are you glad that Mitsubishi has decided to revive the Ralliart brand?