The senior vice president for after sales at the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance says that the firm has already “learned some stuff from Mitsubishi” about building bakkies.
Speaking to CarAdvice, Kent O’Hara said “the Mitsubishi partnership will be a good one for us”. In October 2016, Nissan completed its acquisition of a 34% equity stake in Mitsubishi to became its largest shareholder and draw the brand into the global Alliance with Nissan and Renault.
“One of the things that’s been very helpful is that there’s been enough specific examples – early into Mitsubishi’s joining – where frankly, they’re doing things at a better level of efficiency and cost level than we are,” O’Hara said, according to the Australian publication.
“It means that they have a better solution to that particular problem or opportunity that they have come up with. We’ve learned some stuff from Mitsubishi in just looking at the pickups, between the Navara and Triton,” he added.
“We’ve learned some very insightful things on the Triton pickup that I think has already been useful back into the Nissan activities, on figuring out some different improvements to improve cost and design of certain items that we have,” O’Hara revealed.
“Because Mitsubishi hasn’t had all the resources available to them, they’ve had to do things a little bit differently,” he explained.
Still, O’Hara emphasised that the Navara and Triton would retain their distinct identities even in their next generation (when they are expected to share a platform).
“It’s critically important that each of the brands remains unique. If you talk to the customers of the respective brands and vehicles, they have a very unique and very different view, and an appreciation for each of those brands. We never want to do anything that alters that,” he said.
