Struggling Mitsubishi Motors North America Inc. posted a gain in March auto sales versus a dismal February. But the March figure is almost half of the automaker’s sales figure of a year earlier.
The Cypress-based automaker saw an 18% March jump from February, selling 12,477 autos.
But the March figure is down from a year ago when Mitsubishi reported March 2004 sales of 20,415 vehicles.
Mitsubishi, part of Japan’s Mitsubishi Motors Corp., has been struggling to reverse slumping sales. Part of the recent decline has come from fewer sales to rental agencies.
The automaker grew fast here from 1998 to 2002 but saw its strategy of easy credit and marketing to younger drivers backfire three years ago in the form of bad loans.
Mitsubishi has been cutting with more to come. It saw a 4% drop in its local workforce in the past year, a loss of about 30 people. It now employs about 744 people, not including 300 job cuts expected to play out through July.
Mitsubishi said it now plans to contract out its loan processing, which stands to bring more job losses.
Rich Gilligan, chief executive and president, is charged with turning the U.S. operation around. Hideyasu Tagaya, former president of the Japanese parent, is the automaker’s U.S. chairman.
The picture was better for another Japanese automaker based here, Brea’s American Suzuki Motor Corp. It reported a 4% jump in U.S. auto sales to 7,446 vehicles for March versus year earlier.
For the first quarter, the automaker saw a 12% spike in sales to 19,024 vehicles. The automaker said the March numbers are its best since 1988.
