Mitsubishi’s Automobile Council plan

Mitsubishi is not going to Automobile Council 2026 to talk about its future in the abstract. It is going there to talk about one vehicle, one idea, and one old strength. The company said on April 6 that it will exhibit at the show at Makuhari Messe from April 10 to 12 under the theme “Brand Legacy: Past to Future Mitsubishi.” Then it made the point obvious by filling the stand with five machines that all orbit the Pajero. (mitsubishi-motors.com) That choice matters because Automobile Council is built for this kind of argument. The event is not a standard new-car expo. Its own pitch is that it brings heritage cars and modern cars together and treats the automobile as culture, not just product. Mitsubishi is using that setting to say that its identity did not begin with crossovers and kei cars. It began with hard-use four-wheel drives, desert racing, and a kind of engineering stubbornness that once made the brand feel larger than its sales chart. (automobile-council.com) The lineup is a neat little history lesson. Mitsubishi will show the 1953 J11 Delivery Wagon, built under tie-up with Willys-Overland, as the ancestral four-wheel-drive. It will show the 1973 Pajero I concept, an open buggy that gave the name its first real shape. Then it jumps to the first-generation Pajero from 1982 and the second-generation model from 1991, the one that introduced Mitsubishi’s Super Select 4WD system, which let drivers switch drive modes on the move. This is not a random collection. It is a straight line from licensed utility vehicle to concept to mass-market icon. (mitsubishi-motors.com) The fifth vehicle is the real emotional hook. Mitsubishi is bringing the 1985 Dakar Rally overall winner, the car that gave the Pajero its first outright victory in the event and made Mitsubishi the first Japanese automaker to win Dakar overall. The company says that specific car was restored to running condition in 2025, which turns the display from static nostalgia into something closer to resurrection. Mitsubishi’s official Dakar history gives the broader scale of the achievement: the Pajero entered 26 times and won 12 overalls, including seven straight. That is not heritage as branding fluff. That is heritage as hard record. (mitsubishi-motors.com) There is also a reason Mitsubishi is reaching for this memory now. The Pajero name disappeared from production in 2021, after Mitsubishi announced in 2020 that Pajero Manufacturing would stop production in the first half of 2021. Since then, the company has leaned on vehicles like the Outlander and Delica Mini, useful products that do not carry the same myth. A heritage-heavy stand at a show devoted to car culture looks like an attempt to recover that myth in public. The social teaser campaign fits the same pattern. The posts did not sell specs. They sold lineage. (mitsubishi-motors.com) That makes the theme line more revealing than it first appears. “Past to Future Mitsubishi” sounds broad, but the actual exhibit is narrow and disciplined. Mitsubishi is telling visitors that if they want to understand what the brand should be next, they should start with a 1953 Willys-derived wagon, pass through a 1973 concept, stop at a 1991 SUV with a world-first four-wheel-drive system, and end in the sand with a restored 1985 Dakar winner sitting in Hall 5 and 6 at Makuhari Messe. (mitsubishi-motors.com)