Mitsubishi vehicles in SA for more than 50 years

Mitsubishi has never been a major player in the local passenger car market even though it made its first appearance in South Africa in 1968 when the Colt 1100 Fastback was assembled by Praetor Industries – alongside the Glas-bodied BMW sedan – in Rosslyn.

I was working for The Pretoria News at the time and attended a media visit to the fledgling factory, which was rather primitive in its method of operation at the time, to see the Colt and BMW being assembled.

Little did I know that Mitsubishi would play an important role in my future working career. I joined the public relations department of Chrysler South Africa at its new plant in Silverton in 1968 and in 1971 Chrysler Corporation bought a 15% stake in Mitsubishi Motors, so soon I was linked up with Mitsubishi again.

The unusually styled Colt 1100 range of hatch, bakkie and station wagon were sold for a while and then came the stylish Dodge Colt coupe. I was very happy to be personally involved in the introduction of this exciting new model to South Africa as we used motor rallying to get the Colt brand known.

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I was the co-driver for a number of drivers in these cars, so was involved directly in the project. Over the years a number of Colt passenger car models, including the popular Galant, were introduced into the SA market by Chrysler and were well accepted.

Then came the merger, in 1976, of Chrysler and Illings Mazda to form Sigma Motor Corporation as Chrysler withdrew from SA. The new company favoured Mazda products and so the Colt one-ton bakkie was not introduced locally as Sigma.

Later, Samcor had the Mazda B-Series bakkie which was also badged as a Ford Courier. In the end the only Mitsubishi products that survived at this time were the L300 minibus and van (later also badged as the Ford Husky in the Samcor era) and the Mitsubishi Canter medium trucks (Ford also marketed variants under the Triton model name).

My links with Mitsubishi ended in 1988 when I moved from Samcor to Toyota, but Mitsubishi was given another life in South Africa when it was taken over by Mercedes-Benz in 1995 and the one-ton Mitsubishi L200 (Colt) bakkie arrived in South Africa at last.

Although it is now more than 30 years since I was involved with Mitsubishi I still have many happy memories particularly those involving the rally programme, where I got to partner the American Champion, Scott Harvey in the 5 000km Total Rally in 1972, where we finished sixth out of 101 entries.

I also brought out other prominent rally drivers, such as Andrew Cowan (UK) and Hendrik Blok (US) to drive the local Colts. Another memory was driving to dealers to showcase the Mitsubishi Galant GTO, which looked like a mini-Mustang, as an example of Mitsubishi’s expertise as designers and builders of exciting cars.

I still keep contact with Akira Igo, who was the Mitsubishi representative in South Africa at the time of our rally programme. It certainly was an important part of my 50-odd years of involvement in the South African motor industry.

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