Mitsubishi Motors has cash to weather scandal, but brand battered

We’ve been building up our finances over the past 2-3 years,” Managing Director Yutaka Tabata said. “Our financial structure is strong.”

Right.....said with a straight face, but probably knowing that SOMETHING was going to happen and you would need all the cash you can get your hands on to survive.

Seems to me that this company KNEW something was screwy.

If it weren't for affiliates like the Mitsubishi banks and real estate companies, Mitsubishi Motors with their " use and throwaway (discard)" car mentality would have shut down back in 25 years ago with their first coverup scandal. It was through this criminal acts that they were able to save enough money for a rainy day. The money they accumulated were from duped car buyers like myself when I was young and unaware of their deficts as they were continously hidden from the public. I will be overjoyed when I no longer have to hear their fake ads on TV or the name Mitsubishi Motors, a company that doesn't deserve to survive in a free market.

Using deception to sell products is unfair to the customer and should be rewarded with strict punishment.I pity those people that were duped by their corrupt actions.....

And this is why calls to let the free market regulate itself quite simply don't work. Yes, the Mitsubishi stock value fell over the past few weeks, but no one gives a damn about stock prices in the short term. Meanwhile, instead of hiring new talent, giving raises to its employees, and circulating its profits through the economy for the benefit of everyone (including lets not forget, itself) Mitsubishi hordes its money as a defense against the chance it gets caught out committing fraud, and very likely the savings will hold out longer than the public's outrage (or even memory) of this scandal will last.

Especially because they know that in Japan, everyone else is doing it. Spinach grown in Fukushima is marked as spinach from Chiba. MacDonald's chicken is old, outdated. and has spent time sitting on the floor. That manshon you live in that was sold to you as earthquake resistant is now leaning over because the survey company didn't do their job. When pretty much every corner of the market knows they can get away with defrauding their customers, customers have no where else to turn. And companies will, because times are tough and margins are thin and when every one of your competitors is defrauding the public to make a quick buck, you going the extra mile to be honest could well sink your company faster than getting caught cutting a few corners.

I love Japanese cars and borrowing from the words of Trump, I want to see Japan great again. But when companies like Takata and Mitsubishi knowingly pull this illegal nonsense I would gladly see them fold and either see a better company rise from the ashes or strengthen the other companies in the same industry. Japan is shrinking. This is fact and its okay, but it will not be able to support as many mega corporations. Mitsubishi folds, it will help out Honda, Toyota, and Subaru. Either way, this scandal will help out the sales of the other J-car companies.

The firm has repeated the same kind of wrongdoing, so the situation is not good,” said a government source who didn’t >>want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

So that is Brilliant ! The government which refuse to be named because reporting a wrongdoing on Mitsubishi is "sensible", what country is that ?

In Japan, Mitsubishi Motors is not very popular, but in other Asian countries like the Philippines it is popular. Another issue Mitsubishi Motors has is the Montero "sudden acceleration" syndrome with the diesel. Having said that many other vehicles (KIA/Hyundai et al) have seen sudden acceleration issues and with car video cameras this is well documented.

Mitsubishi is maybe the most Japanese classic styled (less rounded, more straight lines) of Japanese auto makers now.

All corporations maintain themselves in part, and perhaps almost 100% in some cases, by displacing their costs onto everyone else while claiming the profit for themselves. This is basically what a corporation is, especially the bigger they get. In fact, this is perhaps the biggest driver of size. Others pay for the social, environmental and political perversion and devastation they cause. As such we should be circumspect about permitting their existence. Serial offenders such as MMC should have their implicit licence to exist taken away and their assets seized. But of course, they infiltrate the mechanisms of the state and ensure there is no such chance of this happening. Plus they help to convince everyone, through advertising and PR, that they are useful while if I produced ads critical of any company or business I would quickly find it illegal.

Money cannot buy a reputation.

The company has said it is checking to see if its vehicles sold in Asia and in Europe were compliant.

Europe is not Japan, and if Europe decided to jump into this, they will likely check themselves and not ask Mitsubishi for doing it. There are better agencies in Europe for consumer protection and certainly "repeated company wrongdoings and fraud" are not as "sensible" as it is in Japan so it must be kept under cover with the complicity of some "government source" which knew it all along and never exposed the truth to Japanese consumers.

DisillusionedMAY. 02, 2016 - 11:42AM JST Money cannot buy a reputation.

The Donald Trump presidential campaign would like a word with you.

“The firm has repeated the same kind of wrongdoing, so the situation is not good,” said a government source who didn’t want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The sensitivity being that Mitsubishi is core to Abe's nascent military-industrial complex?

Given that now two world manufacturers of cars have misrepresented the fuel data on their cars, it is past time that manufacturers should not be allowed to publish their own data but that each new model had to be comprehensively assessed by a fully government-funded agency, and only these figures would be the published official ones. That way customers would be assured of correct publicity on technical data.

The sensitivity being that Mitsubishi is core to Abe's nascent military-industrial complex?

Uh ... no. The "military-industrial complex" couldn't care less about Mitsubishi Motors and their crappy vehicles.

Their ill-gotten gains must now be taken away from them.

I remember these guys from the days of denying their rims were faulty and had the tendency to fly off the axel and kill mothers walking by on the sidewalks with their kids. Mitsubishi is despicable.

"Having said that many other vehicles (KIA/Hyundai et al) have seen sudden acceleration issues.."

You mean TOYOTA, right?

John, both Hyundai and KIA have had acceleration problems.

"Having said that many other vehicles (KIA/Hyundai et al) have seen sudden acceleration issues.." You mean TOYOTA, right?

It is true that Toyota has been heavily promoted with "sudden acceleration" in the USA, but most of the video proof comes from Korea since almost every car there has a video camera installed = most of the video proof is from Korea so KIA and Hyundai are in most of the videos.

Mitsubishi Montero diesel in Philippines is another.