Mitsubishi Triton joins the 4000 sales club

UPDATED: 04/07/2014MITSUBISHI’S seven-year-old Triton ute has joined an illustrious club, becoming one of the few models to achieve more than 4000 sales in a month in Australia.

The heavily discounted run-out model racked up a record 4124 sales in June, well above the Thai-built light truck’s previous benchmark of 3459 units in June last year.

Official sales figures show the Triton finished just behind Toyota’s long-time light truck market leader, the HiLux, which scored 4276 sales last month amid industry-wide end-of-financial-year bonuses and a heavy advertising blitz.

The Triton tally has also placed it in the top three vehicle sales in Australia for the first time, behind the top-selling Corolla small car (4648 units) and HiLux.

Due to be replaced by an all-new model in December, the Triton accounted for half of all Mitsubishi Motors Australia sales for the month.

Figures released by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries (FCAI) reveal that Mitsubishi sold a total of 8281 passenger and light commercial vehicles in June.

While this was the company’s best monthly tally so far this year, the sales figure was down 10.5 per cent on last year’s June sales total of 9257 – the best month of Mitsubishi sales since it became a full-line importer.

The problem for Mitsubishi was that, apart from Triton, no Mitsubishi model achieved more than 1000 units, with the new Outlander next best on 972 sales for the month, followed by the ageing Lancer on 933 units, despite deals such as $19,990 driveaway pricing and free CVT auto transmission and alloy wheels on Lancer ES Sport.

Mirage light-car sales have fallen off a cliff since early in the year. In February, the company sold more than 1100 of the little hatchbacks, but last month, despite special offers, dealers managed to move 237 units.

The Triton is the next major Mitsubishi model to get a complete overhaul, with Thai factory gearing up to start production of the all-new model in the second half of this year.

Sales of the new generation will start with diesel-engine variants, with a hybrid version to follow later, probably at the first facelift.