Mitsubishi says its small sports utility is being kept on because its a sales star - but it might not be easily replaced.

AT LEAST another year of sale is being squeezed out of the longest-lived new light passenger car available to Kiwis.

Mitsubishi’s national distributor has confirmed the ASX (above) will continue to be a core contributor into 2026.

International reports are that the small SUV is set to remain in production until 2027.

It’s a remarkable feat for a car introduced in 2010, all the moreso given when most rivals last less than 10 years.

ASX is being kept on here because it holds enduring popularity, Mitsubishi Motors New Zealand insists, pointing to how it performed in 2024, when 3763 registrations were accrued.

That count made it the second-most popular light passenger car, and best-supported pick of the two other Mitsubishis - both more modern designs - though all cumulatively garnered less than half the count credited to the primary national choice, Toyota RAV4.

ASX was also MMNZ’s second best seller last year, behind the Triton utility.

Reece Congdon, MMNZ head of marketing and corporate affairs, says it’s ASX’s evergreen run and not the lack of a suitable alternate that is keeping it in the showroom.

With just four model lines - ASX, Eclipse Cross and Outlander sports utilities and Triton and a Pajero Sport wagon derivative of the previous ute - MMNZ has a modest offering here, but that seems set to soon change.

“While I’m not in a position to confirm details, MMNZ will have a number of exciting product announcements to make over the course of the next 12 months,” Congdon said.

That disclosure comes in wake of Mitsubishi Australia having retired the ASX for a safety matter specific to their market.

Our neighbour is also sharing that it is troubled to source new products, out of concern about their potential to achieve satisfactory crash test ratings from the Australasian New Car Assessment Programme (ANCAP), the safety auditor for there and also here.

That sentiment has kiboshed the XForce (above), a SUV slightly larger than ASX which having launched in South East Asia in 2023 as a pure petrol car has now released with an advanced hybrid drivetrain.

Congdon will not say if MMNZ is sizing up Xforce or Xpander, a sister people mover model sharing the same hybrid.

Conceivably, their 1.6-litre powertrain - which marries a non-turbo petrol engine with an electric motor, high-voltage battery, and a "newly developed" two-speed transaxle - could sit sweetly in our market.

Hybrids were the sole powertrain to gain volume last year, when the overall market was down and the introduction of Road User Charges largely froze consumer interest in the for the plug-in technology MMNZ otherwise has.

Mitsubishi’s hybrid drivetrain is more in keeping with the hybrids from market-dominant Toyota, but not alike.

It allows for the electric motor to be disconnected from the drive shaft at high speeds to reduce energy loss, along with improvements to road noise and acceleration to deliver a “seamless EV-like driving experience”.

So could it be a starter here?

“I’m not in a position currently to confirm nameplates that we’re considering,” Congdon says.

Xforce and Xpander are conceived for markets with less stringent safety standards; it sells in South-East Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

Mitsubishi Australia reportedly believes Xforce would require costly safety upgrades to have a chance of achieving top marks in ANCAP crash-testing.

There is concern without revision it would only get three stars at the most.

That's two too few for it to be considered by fleets (which include Government agencies) that prioritise maximum scorers.

That is nonetheless a superior standing than occurs with ASX, which in its time here has undergone two major facelifts and many minor revisions.

But it has also remained in play so long as to outlast the ANCAP five star it was accredited in 2014, so now sells without that credential.

The car’s score was retired as result of the safety watchdog having introduced six-year expiry dates on ratings so consumers have a better chance to compare like-for-like results.

When expiry dates were introduced in 2023, ASX was in the first batch of cars to be stripped.

What has seen supply now being being curtailed to Australia is it falling short of requirement laid down by a regulation there called the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard.

Mitsubishi Japan said the cost of re-engineering the current car to meet that “was not commercially feasible.”

Accordingly, Australia has also decided to sell the ‘other’ ASX, the one sold in Europe.

That car is a rebranded Renault Captur - with only different bumpers and badges to set it apart - rather than a ground-up, in-house new model, but is nonetheless more modern than the Japan-made original.

It lands toward the end of this year and stock of the old car has been built up to help bridge the gap to the new.

MMNZ has previously said it isn’t interested in the French-made choice, whose donor used to sell here up to the end of 2023, when Renault NZ rejigged, dropping passenger cars and becoming a commercial vehicle entity.

If anything, the decision to keep current Japan-designed ASX points to it preferring to await a successor, which has previously been reported to be an Xforce-based model.

Congdon says the current ASX holds credential as “one of NZ’s highest volume vehicles” and he is pleased “ASX will continue to be part of MMNZ’s range in 2026.”

It has been incredibly enduring. The average production run for most new cars is around eight years. When ASX arrived, MMNZ was selling another car whose production life was longer than most; the Lancer.

It retired after a dozen years on the job - at that time, it was the longest-lived new Japanese car here, but clearly ASX has done better.

If current ASX lasts until 2027, it will beat the 17 year run of Europe’s oldest new car, the Fiat 500 that finally curtailed last year.