Star-Telegram.com's view

Mitsubishi’s U.S. dealers finally have a pickup they can sell.

The 2006 Raider went on sale this week, the first pickup in the Mitsubishi lineup in several years, since the company discontinued its compact truck line that was built in Japan.

The reason for dropping the pickup earlier was that the United States has a 25 percent import duty on light trucks, and that makes it almost financially impossible for a foreign automaker to sell pickups in the United States unless it also can built them here. The duty doesn’t apply in that case.

While the Raider is built in North America, it’s not really a Mitsubishi, however. It’s a rebadged Dodge Dakota, produced for Mitsubishi in an arrangement similar to that of Ford and Japan’s Mazda, with Mazda dealers selling a rebadged Ford Ranger as its B-series pickup, and General Motors and Japan’s Isuzu, with Isuzu dealers selling a rebadged Chevrolet Colorado/GMC Canyon.

Although Mitsubishi has a U.S. plant, in Normal, Ill., that facility is building cars, including the new 2006 Mitsubishi Eclipse that went on sale this past summer. It doesn’t have the capacity to build pickups, and anyway, Dodge already has the very capable Dakota, which was completely redesigned two years ago. It’s cheaper for Mitsubishi to pay DaimlerChrysler to build midsize pickups with Mitsubishi badging than for the Japanese automaker to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to design its own, then set up a North American factory to build them.

For those of us who have always liked the little compact pickups from Japan, such as the Datsun/Nissan and Toyota models that begin arriving here in the ’60s, the idea of a Japanese automaker embracing an American-designed truck and selling it with a Japanese brand name on it is rather, well, foreign.

That’s because those little Japanese trucks offered something the U.S. automakers couldn’t or wouldn’t — small trucks that were economical to buy and operate, and which would run almost forever. Quality has always been one of the biggest draws of the Japanese trucks in comparison with U.S. brands.

Although the U.S. Big Three — GM, Ford and Chrysler — have always been pretty adept at building full-size pickups, they were slow to develop good compact trucks, and, in fact, sold Japanese-built pickups rebadged as Ford, Chevrolet and Dodge vehicles for a while. Among the first was the little Chevy LUV truck of the early ’70s, as well as the Ford Courier.

Chrysler in the past has sold Mitsubishi pickups rebadged as Dodge vehicles, so I suppose turnabout is fair play. Now we get a Dodge pickup rebadged as a Mitsubishi. Who would buy such a thing? Probably a good portion of the buyers will be consumers who think they’re buying a Japanese pickup, and who probably wouldn’t buy one if it had the Dodge, Chevy, GMC or Ford name on it.

It’s still surprising to me how many consumers don’t know exactly what they’re buying. Some people are still surprised to hear that Mazda trucks are really Fords, and that vehicles such as the previous-generation Nissan Quest minivan, for example, was a virtual clone of the Mercury Villager, assembled by Ford in Ohio, but carrying Nissan engines, transmissions and body panels from plants in Tennessee.

DaimlerChrysler sells two midsize coupes — the Dodge Stratus and Chrysler Sebring — that are built by Mitsubishi.

In the case of the Raider, however, the truck is all Dodge. Mitsubishi supplies virtually nothing for the vehicle.

With a base price of $19,825 including freight — close to the $20,019 starting price of a similarly equipped Dakota — Mitsubishi offers the entry level Raider LS extended-cab model with two-wheel drive, five-speed manual transmission, and 3.7-liter V-6 engine. This is same engine used in base models of the Dakota, Dodge Durango SUV, and Jeep Liberty and Grand Cherokee SUVs. In the Raider, it’s rated at 210 horsepower and 235 foot-pounds of torque.

Two other trim levels are offered — the midlevel DuroCross and the uplevel XLS. The DuroCross two-wheel drive, extended cab model with automatic transmission and a 4.7-liter V-8 engine is priced at $26,085 (before options), while the uplevel XLS crew-cab four-door with 4.7-liter V-8 and automatic is priced at $31,320.

Options are limited. Mitsubishi says an audio package that includes a 508-watt premium system with AM/FM/six-disc CD with MP3, nine speakers, and Sirius satellite radio costs $1,845, including six months of satellite service (normally $13 a month). For XLS models, leather seats and side-curtain air bags are available.

All three trim levels are offered in extended- and crew-cab versions, with the crew cab the roomiest, with four regular doors. All also are available with four-wheel drive and a choice of manual or automatic transmissions.

While these trucks are completely Dodges underneath, Mitsubishi was able to tweak the exterior styling a bit to give them some styling cues from other Mitsubishi products, the company said.

Of the midsize brands on the market, the Raider and the Dakota are the only ones to offer a V-8 engine. The engine gives the Raider 230 horsepower and 290 foot-pounds of torque, which allows for a towing capacity of 6,500 pounds.

And its 40-cubic-foot cargo bed can hold up to 1,700 pounds, giving the Raider and Dakota the largest payload among midsize pikcups.

Ford/Mazda midsize models have no engines larger than six-cylinders, as do the Nissan Frontier and Toyota Tacoma. The GMC/Chevy/Isuzu models have a five-cylinder as their largest engine.

Because the truck upon which it is based is about the same size as most other automakers’ full-size pickups, the Raider has a very roomy interior, and Mitsubishi claims class-leading rear leg room.

The DuroCross trim apparently is similar in concept to the Tacoma Pre-Runner. The DuroCross has a more-rugged appearance like the Pre-Runner, and includes a skid-plate bumper, fog lights, black fender flares, side steps, bedliner, 17-inch wheels with off-road tires, and sliding rear window.

The Raider comes with Mitsubishi’s five-year, 60,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty with free roadside assistance throughout the warranty period.

– – –

G. Chambers Williams III is staff automotive columnist for the San Antonio Express-News and former transportation writer for the Star-Telegram. His automotive columns have appeared regularly in the Star-Telegram since 1995. Contact him at (210) 250-3236; chambers@star-telegram.com.