CarBrandLogos archive · Mitsubishi · 1917

MitsubishiMitsubishi Model A

One of Japan's first series-built cars, made by a shipbuilder in Kobe.

Photo: TTTNIS · CC0

The story

A defining chapter in Mitsubishi history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Mitsubishi Model A, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

Mitsubishi Shipbuilding built this one out of curiosity rather than commercial logic. Assembled at Kobe from 1917, the Model A was a hand-built four-door sedan closely based on the Fiat Tipo 3, with a 2,765cc four, and it is generally counted among the first series-production cars made in Japan.

Mitsubishi model a and workers · Mitsubishi Motors Corporation · Public domain

Design and engineering

Series-production is doing a great deal of work in that sentence. Output was tiny, the car cost far more than an imported American equivalent, and production stopped in 1921. Japan had neither the road network to justify it nor a supplier base to make it cheaply.

In production

Mitsubishi did not build passenger cars in volume again for four decades. The company later marked its centenary with a running reproduction, which is why a small modern engine appears in the specifications alongside the original's.

At a glance