It has been nearly four years since Mitsubishi has announced an all-new car for the U.S. market; apart from a few concept cars and mid-cycle updates, the company?s last big auto-show production-car debut was the Mirage hatchback way back in 2013. The good news is that the drought will end soon, as Mitsubishi is planning to introduce an all-new vehicle in just a few months, at the Geneva auto show this March. It’s scheduled to go on sale in America at the beginning of 2018, and to no one’s surprise, it?ll be another small crossover.
The new entry is meant to fit in between the Outlander Sport and the Outlander in Mitsu?s lineup. The gap between those two, however, would seem to be too small to accommodate a new model. The five-seat Outlander Sport is slightly larger than other subcompact SUVs such as the Honda HR-V, while the seven-seat Outlander is a bit bigger than compacts such as the Honda CR-V. So Mitsubishi is planning eventually to grow the Outlander and shrink the Outlander Sport while slotting this unnamed new crossover in between the two. Both Outlander variants will receive a refresh for the 2018 model year, although it’s unclear if the size reshuffling will happen then or with a full redesign later on. The new Mitsubishi was engineered completely in-house with no help from the company’s new owner, Nissan. It will use a new turbocharged four-cylinder engine that Mitsubishi says has more power and torque than the current 2.4-liter four-cyli...