Mitsubishi is to double production at its US factory in Illinois to 70,000 vehicles a year, according to the Japanese business daily Nikkei.
The newspaper noted Mitsubishi Motors North America (MMNA) [in a move announced in February 2011 – ed] will this summer stop making vehicles exclusively for the North American market and focus insread on assembling and exporting the Outlander Sport SUV.
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MMNA sees Latin America, Russia and other regions – where exports can be denominated in dollars – as primary destinations for the SUV. The larger Outlander is assembled in Russia by a joint venture between Mitsubishi Motors Corp and PSA Peugeot-Citroen.
The company’s plan to start making the more compact version at the Illinois plant is a move to boost capacity which has been hit by slow sales, the Nikkei said.
With the vehicle market burgeoning in developing countries, Mitsubishi’s factories in emerging markets such as Thailand are at full capacity while production has slowed at plants in Europe and the US.
The Illinois plant, once called Diamond-Star Motors, was initially a 50-50 joint venture between Chrysler and Mitsubishi and opened in 1988 with annual capacity of 240,000 units. Its peak output was 222,414 in 2000, according to MMNA data, but this plunged to just 18,502 in 2009.
Last February, Mitsubishi said it would wind down European production at its factory in The Netherlands at the end of this year.
