Mitsubishi Looks for Buyers and Its Niche

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Mitsubishi Looks for Buyers and Its Niche
《纽约时报》: 三菱汽车期待汽车买主



(中文大意)

　　三菱汽车过去在美国市场上是畅销品牌，现在180度大转弯，公司高管正为扭转困境绞尽脑汁。

　　南卡罗莱纳州佛罗伦斯的一家三菱专卖店店长Maria Prendergast-Lunn称，6月份惨不忍睹，仅销售10辆车，而一年前每月能销75辆。

　　三菱车在美国市场的占有率从2003年6月的1.5%跌至上月的0.8%，仅销售1.23万辆。上周三菱宣布在美国裁员1200名员工，占员工总数的1/3。三菱也在减少广告投放。分析师预计三菱有10亿美元的坏帐需注销。

　　公司高管表示，尽管有巨大财务压力，公司仍致力于重塑品牌。三菱美国区总裁奥尼尔试图通过将三菱保修里程延至10万英里等手段来促进销售。


With American sales of Mitsubishi, once one of the hottest car brands, in a free fall, the company's executives are trying to engineer a turnaround.

It could not come too soon for dealers and employees. \"June was a terrible month. I sold 10 cars,\" said Maria Prendergast-Lunn, general manager of Auddie Brown Mitsubishi in Florence, S.C., 80 miles from the major metropolitan center of Columbia. A year ago the dealership sold 75 Mitsubishis a month.

Sales started picking up this month, but even so Ms. Prendergast-Lunn expects the dealership to sell only half the number of vehicles it did a year earlier. \"I'm hoping to end July with 35 or 40 sales,\" she said.

Other dealers are struggling as well. The market share of Mitsubishi Motors North America, the United States unit of the Japanese automaker, has been halved in just a year, to 0.8 percent last month from 1.5 percent in June 2003, according to the Autodata Corporation. In June, the company's sales dropped 45.7 percent, to 12,301.

Mitsubishi announced last week that it would lay off 1,200 employees, or about a third of its work force in Normal, Ill., site of its American plant, where it produces the Galant sedan, the Eclipse sporty coupe car and the Endeavor sport utility vehicle.

Mitsubishi has also decreased its advertising. For years it pitched the brand to young consumers with cheap financing and emotional eye-catching ads set to the music of Average White Band, Iggy Pop and Republica. That strategy created some of its trouble because it suffered a high default rate on the loans. Analysts say that Mitsubishi needs to write off about $1 billion in bad loans.

\"We were a brand on sale,\" said Finbarr J. O'Neill, the American company's chief executive, in a telephone interview. Mr. O'Neill, the former chief executive of Hyundai Motor America, was hired last September to succeed Pierre Gagnon who was blamed for the aggressive financing.

\"Now we need to establish natural demand for the products,\" Mr. O'Neill said.

The American sales slump has been a big factor in the struggles of the Japanese parent company, but not the only factor. Mitsubishi has also suffered from a cover-up of defects in its cars and trucks for decades.

In April, Mitsubishi's minority owner, DaimlerChrysler, decided not to invest any more money in the troubled carmaker, and Mitsubishi had to scramble for money to cover its debts. The Phoenix Capital Company, a Tokyo-based investment firm, bought a third of the company, replacing DaimlerChrysler as the controlling partner.

The parent company's financial and quality problems make Mr. O'Neill's battle to reverse the fortunes of Mitsubishi tougher. The American unit has only two new models coming in the next several months, a redesigned Eclipse sport coupe and a small truck built by Chrysler.

\"It takes time to get all of this done,\" Mr. O'Neill said, \"and we also are under financial pressures.\"

He added: \"We are doing what we need to do. I just wish I could speed up time.\"

Mr. O'Neill is familiar with time-consuming turnarounds. When he took over as chief executive at Hyundai in 1998, the brand was on the skids. It was selling fewer than 100,000 units a year, and dealers were disgruntled. Over the next six years, Mr. O'Neill pushed hard to solve the company's quality problems, offering one of the industry's longest and most extensive warranties. This year, Hyundai's sales have had double-digit increases, and the brand has snagged top spots on quality surveys.

At Mitsubishi, Mr. O'Neill is using some of the same strategies. Earlier this year, he introduced a 100,000-mile warranty on vehicles, and he is promoting it this summer.

\"I want to get rid of any objections that people may have had with our cars,\" Mr. O'Neill said.

He said the company also had to focus on \"what is Mitsubishi's reason for existence?\" His answer is to cast Mitsubishi's vehicles as performance-driven alternatives to some of the country's most respected brands.

\"I like to think there's a little bit of Evo in all of our cars,\" Mr. O'Neill said, referring to the Lancer Evolution, a small but powerful car that has won at the World Rally Championships and is a favorite among young adults who \"tune\" their car's engine for higher horsepower and performance.

Advertising for the redesigned 2004 Galant midsize sedan introduced earlier this year, pits the car against the Toyota Camry in a high-speed crash avoidance test. The cars follow two semi-trucks from which two men are throwing everything from bowling balls to barbecue grills in front of the two fast-moving cars. Each car swerves to miss the obstacles. Finally, two old cars fall out of the back of the semis and the Galant and the Camry swerve to miss them. The Galant deftly maneuvers around them while the Camry is left in the dust.

On the company's Web site, Mitsubishi also claims that the Galant brakes faster from 70 miles an hour to zero than Camry and Accord and accelerates faster from zero to 60 miles an hour. Automotive Marketing Consultants Inc., which conducts tests to support advertising claims, said its tests had verified Mitsubishi's claims.

This summer, seeking to get people behind the wheel of its vehicles, Mitsubishi is inviting thousands of consumers to re-enact the tests at special \"ride-and-drive\" events in 10 cities.

The hands-on tactic has become increasingly popular with automakers. General Motors and Audi have offered 24-hour test-drives.

Ms. Prendergast-Lunn credits the new advertising and the new warranty for drawing more buyers in July. \"I feel that this campaign is the best that we've ever done,\" she said. \"We've put out the best warranty, and if that doesn't bring people in, I don't know what will.\"

But branding experts and other dealers say that the warranty and the side-by-side comparisons are going to be a hard sale against well-established brands.

\"It's tough to win by contrasting your features against the competition when you are trying to reinvent a brand,\" said Erich Joachimsthaler, chief executive of Vivaldi Partners, a brand-consulting firm in New York.

\"Consumers already have made up their minds,\" he said, \"and it's tough for consumers to 'unlearn' what they think about a brand.\"

Some dealers also doubt that the comparison strategy will set Mitsubishi apart.

\"You just can't go head-to-head with Toyota or Honda,\" said Ernie Boch Jr., owner of Boch Mitsubishi in Norwood, Mass., who is set to open a $5 million showroom in the coming months.

\"Mitsubishi has to understand that it's a niche brand. They have to brand the car. They have to do something better than anybody else.\"