This Ralliart Appearance Pack Is Everything Wrong with Mitsubishi Today
Mitsubishi is digging up the Ralliart name to hock some minor trim and stickers in Thailand.
It's been a minute and a half since Mitsubishi has done anything remotely cool and judging by the branding shenanigans it's getting up to overseas, it isn't likely the once-great automaker will be breaking that streak any time soon.
Brought to our attention by Motor1, Mitsu has introduced new Ralliart versions of the Pajero Sport SUV and Triton pickup in Thailand. Ralliart-branded enhancements include a little bit of red trim on the bumpers, a small rear spoiler for the Pajero's tailgate, and a bedliner for the Triton. There's also some molding on the Pajero's fenders, mud flaps, floor mats, and, of course, the requisite Ralliart decals on the rear fenders. Sadly, no actual performance-related upgrades or indeed any modifications that affect how these vehicles drive are included... unless, of course, you can convince yourself that that spoiler on the back of the Pajero is indeed creating noticeable downforce.
Per Motor1, the Ralliart appearance packs can only be had on the rear-wheel-drive variants of both trucks and are exclusively available with black or white paint.
In contrast, the U.S.-market Lancer Ralliart from 2009 differentiated itself from the vanilla-spec Lancer with toned-down versions of the Evo X's 4B11 engine, twin-clutch transmission, and AWD system with limited-slip diffs front and back. It was a proper budget sport compact; no big stickers down the side, though, so I guess that's a point for the New Ralliart column.
As part of a financial report published earlier this year, Mitsubishi expressed plans to resurrect the Ralliart brand as well as re-enter motorsport. While we're still holding out hope that the latter will result in some good Mitsubishi news for a change, we can't say we're overly impressed with this first step regarding the former.
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