Mitsubishi Just Uploaded 40 Years of Spectacular Classic Rally Footage to YouTube
Mitsubishi is returning to motorsport, so the world could use a reminder of why that matters.
Mitsubishi has digitized 40 years of classic rally footage, which means you know how you're gonna spend your lunch break. Better yet, it'll whet your appetite for Mitsubishi's ongoing return to motorsport, and renewed pursuit of performance that we already know will culminate in real, off-road-ready Ralliart Mitsubishis.
Uploaded to the YouTube channel Mitsubishi Motors TV, the footage spans four decades from 1967 to 2007. It encompasses both the World Rally Championship and Dakar Rally, both of which Mitsubishi won multiple times consecutively to establish itself as racing royalty. The clips are short, so you can either pick the ones from your favorite era and watch them, or blow through them all if you have a few minutes to spare.
These vignettes of Mitsubishi's motorsport past may have been digitized for reasons related to its return to racing. The revived Ralliart won the 2022 Asia Cross Country Rally, and is believed to be working on multiple performance vehicles. There's already a tri-motor Outlander off-roader prototype undergoing testing according to Wheels, and Mitsubishi Motors' CEO has acknowledged pressure to bring back the Lancer Evolution from—of all places—investors. (Maybe they're not all bad after all.)
A Mitsubishi comeback might sound farfetched, but Ralliart can still call for help from Hiroshi Masuoka; the driver who won the Dakar for Mitsubishi back-to-back in 2002 and 2003. On top of that, Mitsubishi has been ahead of the curve on electrification and all-wheel-drive tuning for decades now. Our drive of the new Outlander PHEV showed that Mitsubishi still knows how to make a car that drives damn well, and if things only get better from here, we may have some magnificent Mitsubishis to look forward to.
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