After long and careful consideration, I’ve come to the conclusion that the implosion of the “Rally car for the road” segment wasn’t quite as simple as changes in the marketplace. That’s a good one for minivans or 2-door sedans. But on this one the entire thing looks mostly self-inflicted.
Part of it of course is that we relied upon the two least reliable Japanese brands in the world to keep at it. Subaru pulled out of the World Rally Championship back in 2008 and stopped making the full-fat STI edition of their impreza in 2021, which means that by now that WRX has about as much rally heritage as the backwards-hat wearing driver who’s struggling to see through their own vape cloud in this stereotypical imaginary scenario. Europeans have the GR Yaris and the Ford Puma ST for the segment, we don’t.
And then there’s Mitsubishi.
Mitsubishi is like that relative you like but know it’s as dependable as the average politician. It used to be that they produced compelling products that you could enjoy provided that you were really cool with them burning oil as though they’re a refinery fire at some unspecified (and sometimes astonishingly early) point in the relationship. Little by little the former part of that sentence started to wane as cars withered for years without any updates, no new models, and finance strategies that left them in a compromising position just as the Koreans started their ascent in market positioning (with Mitsubishi-derived power, in some cases).
Still, through all of this there was the Lancer Evolution, for the person who wanted the Subaru but couldn’t stand their constant attempts to make it uglier with every single revision. All of it culminating on the Evolution X, a huge leap as an overall package compared to its predecessor. So much so, in fact, that people wondered what could Mitsubishi do next. As it turns out, the answer was “Get out of WRC”, before subaru, actually and then let the Evolution stagnate for a decade. Even if there was little incentive to keep at it without a racing team to justify, there was still a market. One that Subaru kept trying to chase with updated models and the requisite million special editions.
Now, there’s some pomp around the fact that Mitsubishi is bringing the Ralliart brand back from its slumber to hopefully do something interesting with it. I say hopefully because the initial steps to bring the brand back will be limited to cosmetic products instead of anything that would improve performance for the better. I’m not even mad, especially since they’re only just now realizing the depths of the hole they’re buried in. With any luck their partnership with Nissan will be leveraged into some boring, but reliable and quite well-made products to re-float the ship, and then maybe to work on something interesting
And anyway, if they don’t, Americans can still rejoice over the GR corolla. After all, it is still a 300HP AWD monster. Between it and the WRX, at least we’re back to a class of two.
