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FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS
Page 189
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But for the SMMT-JAMA gentlemen's agreement limiting their market share, UK Colt sale potential would be enormous I Mitsubishi started making cars inJapan 1917, and a year later made its first truck. oday, Mitsubishi Motors Corporation rms a part of a giant grouping of interlinked )mpanies which account for an estimated ?% of the entire Japanese gross national -oduct. In 1984 it built 1,095,000 vehicles, most equally divided between cars and immercial vehicles. Of the 547,300 immercial vehicles it built in that year, most 256,000 (or 47%) were exported. hese vehicles range from small pickups rough buses to premium-weight Fuso ucks.
For all its weight in the automotive world, lltsubishi was a relatively late arrival in ritain. It was not until October 1974 that a int venture between Mitsubishi and a -oup of British businessmen resulted in the !tting-up of the Colt Car Company. iitsubishi held 49% of the shares, and Colt utomotive held the controlling 51% of the impany, which had a share capital of ?,00, 000.
From such beginnings, Mitsubishi grew iickly — despite setbacks such as its first irts warehouse in Swindon burning down Christmas day 1974— to the stage where now sells some 14,000 vehicles a year in ritain. Most of those sales have naturally :en of cars, but for several years the Anpany has also been selling the L300 inel van, and that now accounts for some 000 sales a year here.
As Colt's managing director Peter eaumont points out, the company's sales e limited by the "gentleman's agreement" Aween the SMMT and its Japanese juivalent, the Japanese Automobile anufacturers Association, JAMA. If the impany wishes to increase its turnover, it in only do so in real terms by selling bigger • more expensive vehicles, and it is partly r that reason that the Canter has now rived in Britain.
300 lead
eaumont says that "It has never been fficult to sell the L300: there's plenty of peat business, and the only real trouble is at they're too reliable, so the customers )n't come back often enough! "The popularity of the L300 has largely been with small businesses and private users, with quite a few motor caravans being based on it. Beaumont says that it is a very easy vehicle to drive, something which appeals very much in those market sectors.
So the Canter, a bigger but very similar vehicle in many aspects, is set to follow the L300 into the British market. In many ways, in fact, it will complement the L300 as well as giving some existing customers the choice of a bigger vehicle.
As Beaumont emphasises, "We're not breaking any rules," by bringing the Canter in: at 3.5 tonnes, it is at the maximum weight at whichJapanese vehicles can come into Britain. What he does say is that If the
market was open to us, the potential would be enormous. "If the company had the opportunity, he says, "There's no doubt about it that we'd expand into bigger vehicles." There are bigger versions of the Canter, which is where the growth would be obvious, but there are the bigger Fighter models and heavy Buses as well, and they are already available in parts of Europe.
Britain's Canters will be assembled alongside those heavier vehicles at MMC's plant in Ireland from semi-knocked-down (SKD) kits. In this system, major components like chassis and cabs come as ready-assembled units, which are then joined together. Beaumont points out that with the tiny volumes available, it would be prohibitively, expensive to assemble the Canters here, and the extra volume generated will help the Irish plant. Mitsubishi has been assembling in Ireland now for the past years and the MMC plant will be acting as an overseas supplier to Colt, which will buy the vehicles in complete.