Mitsubishi Motors Corp., embroiled in a car-rigging scandal in Japan, may find that its future increasingly hinges on its performance in Thailand — the automaker's biggest overseas production base.
Paced by Thailand-built Triton pickups and Pajero SUVs, Mitsubishi Motors sold more than twice as many vehicles in Southeast Asia than in Japan for the fiscal year ended March 30. That gap is poised to widen substantially because the company has stopped assembling the minicars that make up a majority of its domestic sales and are now the subject of a probe involving faked test mileage data.
Keeping business humming in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines will be crucial for MMC to weather the crisis that may necessitate the offering of compensation to customers, the Japanese government and minicar partner Nissan Motor Co. This, too, will be no easy task. Toyota Motor Corp. has projected Thailand's industrywide sales will fall for a fourth straight year, to about half the peak reached in 2012.