Nissan and Honda are tying the knot, merging two of Japan’s Big Three to form a singular massive, hulking automaker. Yet it seems that, in the marriage, Honda won’t be playing step-parent to Nissan’s kids — first the company struck Renault from the deal, and now a new report says Mitsubishi won’t be coming along either.
The report comes from Yomiuri, a Japanese newspaper, via Automotive News. Mitsubishi hasn’t yet made a public announcement one way or another, but the company is expected to officially make its call soon — perhaps as early as the week after next:
Mitsubishi issued a statement saying it was still studying various options and that no conclusions have been reached. It added that the report’s information “was not released by Mitsubishi.”
Mitsubishi CEO Takao Kato, who took the stage with his counterparts from Honda and Nissan at the Dec. 23 merger announcement, said then that his company would decide by the end of January whether to participate in the grand integration. Nissan is Mitsubishi’s biggest shareholder.
…
Mitsubishi is scheduled to announce its fiscal third-quarter earnings on Feb. 3, and an official decision by Mitsubishi may come then. Kato is expected to join the financials presentation.
Excluding Mitsubishi from the merger could be tricky, given that Nissan owns so much of the smaller company. Mitsubishi has been working to buy itself back from Nissan, most recently decreasing the latter’s share of the former from 34 to 24 percent, but that’s still nearly a quarter of Mitsubishi that’s in Nissan’s hands.
An independent Mitsubishi would be an interesting automaker, but a small one. The company’s scale is a drop in the bucket compared to Nissan and Honda, and it’s unclear what the loss of Nissan would do to its structure. The answer likely isn’t “magically bring back the Evo,” but we can dream, right?
