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Mitsubishi cancels its Raider pickup truck to focus on small cars
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The 2010 model year will be the last for Mitsubishi's
slow-selling pickup truck.
You probably haven't heard of the Mitsubishi Raider. There's been little marketing for this Dodge Dakota-sourced pickup truck, and even less sales volume.
After selling fewer than 3,000 Raiders last year, Mitsubishi announced it will stop selling the vehicle after its contract with Chrysler to supply the vehicles ends in the next year.
The Raider was off to a bad start, as it was based on a slow-selling competitor yet included new styling that few seemed to love. And it only went downhill from there, going from unpopular to negligibly popular.
With fewer pickups of any type sold, Mitsubishi's move towards further development of small, fuel-efficient cars seems a wise one. Its current lineup needs some work; the Lancer compact sedan gets poor gas mileage (read full review) and the Galant midsize is one of the oldest cars in its class.
Mitsubishi sells well-regarded small fuel-efficient cars in Asia and Europe, but those products are unavailable here.
The Raider follows the Isuzu i-Series -- another clone of an existing middling small pickup (Chevrolet Colorado) sold by a small manufacturer -- out of the marketplace. The Isuzu brand will cease its American retail operations at the end of this month.
Yet to be discontinued is a new pickup that follows the same model as the Raider and i-Series: the Nissan Frontier-based Suzuki Equator. Though the Frontier is generally considered a better vehicle than the Chevrolet Colorado, it's hard to anticipate the basic trend changing.
And remember that there isn't too much resale value on the truck that no one's heard of.
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