The Mitsubishi SUV Endeavor:
http://www.mitsubishicars.com/endeavor/
to my eyes look more than just a little bit like the previous generation Jeep Grand Cherokee.
IIRC, Mitsubishi has been partially owned/controlled by Jeep’s parent company…DaimlerChrysler, and even earlier by Chrysler alone, previous to the Mercedes merger…for decades.
Mitsubishi even had a separate liscencing agreement with AMC/Jeep/Renault to produce Japanese market Jeep CJs using Mitsu parts.
Was the Endeavor design an originally rejected Jeep?
I doubt it. It might have been designed by the same team, or designed to share certain similarities, but it doesn’t look all that close to a Jeep to me, for the most part. There’s a Subaru it equally seems to resemble, so I think it’s just a case of “groupthink” and not any reuse of a Jeep design completely (though it appears they might share tail lights).
Looks like any other compact SUV to me. BTW, isn’t the Mistsu/Chrysler thing over now? I seem to remember reading that Mitsubishi was needing help recently and Daimler-Chrysler pretty much turned a deaf ear on their pleas.
Nah, DC used Mitsu’s financial problems to assimilate Mitsu completely.
As of March, the two largest owners of voting stock are Mistubishi Heavy Industries and Mitsubishi Corporation. Between them they have just over 27% control, pretty evenly distributed. That would mean that Daimler’s control of the company is something less than 13.5%, hardly complete assimilation. As of September '04, Daimler had 18.88% of Mitsubishi’s stock (preferred & common), but there appears to have been a pretty major shakeup this past spring, since the Mitsubishi Motors press release shows MHI and MitsuCorp as the two largest shareholders now. This shakeup is what I was referencing. I think that they may continue their strategic partnership on some limited basis, but outright ownership is obviously not the case.
Yeah, but I believe they’ve totally taken over the US operations of Mitsu, and might even have “their man” running the Japanese end of things. IIRC, Ford hassomekind of arrangement with Mazda where Ford’s not the largest shareholder, but they pull all the strings in Japan as well as the US, so it might be something similar with DC and Mitsu. From what I remember of the announcement about DC and Mitsu, DC originally told Mitsu to “stuff it” and then ganked them around so that they got more control, whether that was just of the US operations, or included the Japanese, I don’t remember.
I don’t know about D-C running things either. Based on the names of the board members, all appear to be Japanese except for one non-executive member that may very well be German.
The Investor Relations section of the Mistubishi Motors website has all that information.
Ford controls more than a third of Mazda, by far the largest voting block. D-C’s interest in Mitsubishi Motors (MMC) makes them the #3 shareholder, at best (I don’t know how to get a mid-year rundown of a companies ownership information). As far as the US operations, MM North America appears to be a wholly owned subsidiary of MMC.
The only current joint project I can find any information about is the M-B Smart car which MMC wants to sell in Japan and that information is about three years old. I cannot find any current information that shows MMC and D-C in any significant current joint projects.