MITSUBISHI OUTLANDER PHEV

Petrol-electric trendsetter returns as a multi-mode Volvo XC60 rival

- STEVE CROPLEY

Even though it is a brand-new model, the story that surrounds the 2026 Mitsubishi Outlander is about continuity.

On the face of it, a car that went off sale towards the end of 2021 has been succeeded after five years by an all-new Japanese-built replacement – nowadays brought in by a new-to-Mitsubishi importer, International Motors, that already handles Subaru, Isuzu and Xpeng.

But, as managing director Toby Marshall points out, Mitsubishi cars and owners have been continuously supported since 2021 by a network of more than 100 service centres. The company also has 50 sales centres now, in preparation for this new era, some of them from the old network; a further 10 centres are planned. In fact, Marshall himself is part of Mitsubishi’s continuity story, having worked for the marque for 28 years, running the service network during the off-sale years and now installed as the sales company’s MD.

The other label likely to follow the new Outlander is that it is ‘the original PHEV’. Marshall proudly points out that when the Outlander PHEV was new in 2013, only 980 plugin hybrids of all brands had been sold in the whole of the UK. Then the Outlander hit the market, and its sales soared to 10,000 in the first year alone. Between 2014 and 2021 another 44,000 units reached new owners, and the Outlander became the king of PHEVs.

Knowing this, and noting that PHEV sales in the UK this year have soared by more than 40%, Marshall and his backers concluded that there could hardly be a better moment for the relaunch of a high-tech Mitsubishi plugin SUV that is “new from the ground up”.