WHY GENUINE ACCESSORIES?
The story of accessory development coordinated for seamless integration, from planning to YOU.
Mitsubishi Motors’ genuine accessories are designed and developed in tandem with Mitsubishi vehicles for seamless integration. All are thoroughly tested for Safety, Functionality and Durability. We can proudly recommend them to each country and region in compliance with individual regulations. We look forward to continue providing accessories to meet the needs of customers around the world, leveraging the strength of our global development and procurement sites and Japanese "monozukuri" traditions.
DESIGN
Harmonious design that feels integrated with the vehicle from the start is a key advantage of genuine accessories. We believe any accessory we offer should blend into the vehicle design when selected as option, just as they do in catalog images or showroom cars with our genuine accessories installed.
SAFETY
Safety is one of uncompromising areas. We perform various tests to ensure that every part we sell meets our high safety standards and allows adjustment of the safety sensing functions of the vehicle itself. In the case of the Triton’s front protection bar, post-installation collision tests were conducted to ensure no interference with the functioning of the airbag or other equipment.
DURABILITY
Durability tests are conducted by driving cross-country roads, circuit speedways, submerged roads and other conditions with genuine accessories installed. Accessories are also tested under different environmental conditions to gauge heat resistance and resilience to weather and other factors. Since durability is connected to customer safety, we collaborate with car development for test feedback.
FUNCTIONALITY
We design accessories to improve the functionality of the vehicle. For some aero parts, we conduct wind tunnel tests with accessories installed on vehicles at the stage of finalizing the vehicle design. This ability to confirm functionality before the release of the new vehicle is a strength of genuine accessories differentiating them from aftermarket accessories.
Mitsubishi Motors’ accessory integrate
with and enhance the original vehicle
Atsunori Mitsuda
Manager, Product Design Department
Design Division
Integration with the vehicle is a key issue for us in designing accessories. Our approach follows Mitsubishi’s “Robust & Ingenious” design philosophy, allowing us to deliver genuine manufacturer accessories in the distinctive Mitsubishi style.
Unified approach with vehicle design team
We aim to create accessory designs with a characteristic of Mitsubishi identity, going beyond creating sense of unity with the vehicle to actually enhance its appeal. This is in accordance with “Robust & Ingenious” philosophy with its unwavering principles of simple, strong and innovative design.
Some car manufacturers offer accessories that shows different appreace from original design of original impression of the vehicle. In Asian countries in particular, all kinds of accessories are sold in aftermarket, making it hard in some cases to tell what the car’s original design even was. At Mitsubishi Motor, we supply genuine parts that are built with the original vehicle in mind. Our department is adjacent to the vehicle design team, so that we can touch base with each other and tweak our designs to match perfectly.
Globally fitted New Triton accessories
One of the accessories we are proud of for the New Triton is the chrome-plated under garnish, additional to the bumper garnish, which emphasizes “robustness.” Chrome-plated accessories have always been popular overseas, but we made earnest efforts for the New Triton to look even more refined, picturing our customers around the world driving the accessorized vehicle at important moments. We optimize customer demand for accessories to inspire higher-quality feelings for the car. We realize this by collaboration with the car body design division from early stage. It might not be obvious at a glance, but the slight indentations in the design are carefully calculated to reflect the surrounding scenery in the ideal way. If the angles were slightly different, the under-garnish would only reflect the road, making it appear pitch black, so we used computer graphics and models to verify and perfect the design. We also imagined the conditions in which customers would be driving the car, considering how the strong sunshine in Southeast Asia or Australia might be reflected along with the blue sky and reddish-brown road surface.
Optional parts can meet the needs of customers who want a car that is as individual as they are—that stands out among other cars on the road. If our parts succeed in enhancing the Triton’s charms and sparking our customers’ curiosity and spirit of adventure, that will be very rewarding for us as designers.
Creating optional parts that meet customer needs worldwide
is rewarding work
Hiroshi Aoyama
Manager, Accessory Planning and Development Department
Global After Sales Division
We optimize customer demand for accessory to add a higher-quality feeling to the car.
We collaborate with Vehicle Design Dept. from early stage.
Genuine reliability
Our view is that accessories should be smoothly integrated with the vehicle which enhances its appeal. We want to develop accessories that will satisfy even customers who expects more of the original vehicle design. After 13 years in vehicle design, I have spent the past five years in my current department developing accessories, and one thing I love about my job now is that it brings me into much closer contact with our customers.
I strive to ensure that each accessory integrates perfectly even if it is installed after the vehicle is sold on the market. Take the Triton’s black front bumper garnish. The edges where the silver three-diamond Mitsubishi mark meets the black frame are harder to get right than the original vehicle design was. If the gap is too wide, it looks sloppy, but if the edges are too close together they can scratch the car. This makes for an interesting challenge from the design perspective. The Triton is produced in Thailand, and many of its parts are also produced by Thai suppliers. We decided on the final design in consultation with the design division, aiming to bring out the finest technical prowess that those local production sites had to offer. I hope that the challenge of creating these complex accessories will spur further improvements in the technical level of our suppliers.
A customer generally chooses accessories for appearance or functionality. Some of the heavier accessories could limit vehicle functionality after installation. However, we ensure genuine reliability with an absolute minimum of performance limitation through accessory designers consulting with the testing division from early stages of the vehicle design process. That is what we mean by “genuine.”
Responding to global needs
In Australia, there is enduring demand for parts that protect the vehicle from collisions with wild animals. Apparently, many accidents there involve cars crashing into kangaroos. Since wild kangaroos are quite large and move quickly, they can be hard to avoid, and the damage from a collision can be severe. As a result, you see many vehicles in Australia with iron pipes and grills or metal part protectors attached and warning lamps and antennas on top. But installing such aftermarket accessories can have negative effects like limiting the range of the vehicle’s front sensors. Extremely heavy parts can also harm the vehicle’s durability and performance. Therefore, increasing the robustness of the Triton at the design stage proved challenging. We aimed to meet the demands of our customers by creating a front protection bar that combines strength and functionality to protect the vehicle against collisions with animals while matching the overall vehicle design of the Triton.
