Wednesday 18th July 2001

Sour Grapes?

Mitsubishi whinge about recalling grey imports

---

[nmilton]

Well maybe if they imported enough cars (of the right spec) to satisfy the UK market and didn''t price the cars in such a way that it''s still cheaper to go to Japan, buy it and then import it into the UK they wouldn''t have to deal with this problem in the first place. Sorry Mitsubishi UK - no sympathy whatsoever !! You only have yourselves to blame.

[Guy Humpage]

Surely the 'unofficial importers' were not responsible for the faults in the hardware? I thought Mitsubishi UK were one of the better organisations with their view to 'greys' as they will supply parts and service them. Which I'm sure earns them a nice income.

[adrianr]

Might be talking out of my a*** here, but I thought some manufacturers were still volume limited, i.e. only allowed to sell certain numbers of vehicles in the UK. In which case, supply is limited and they have to pass a greater proportion of their overheads on per vehicle. Cheers, AdrianR

[nmilton]

Yes, but surely they'd have a ready market for the more sports orientated derivatives rather than bog standard Charismas, etc. If they'd import enough of the cars that people want, i.e. EVO VIIs, then they wouldn't have to bitch about grey imports. I appreciate that some of this is down to the Japanese market and the demand for the cars there taking precedence over much lower volume overseas sales but it just seems odd that they shoot themselves in the foot like this. Unless they actually secretly endorse grey imports to get round the quota issues and then have to be seen to make a song and dance about the problems of dealing with these cars.....