Let’s Imagine A World In Which Mitsubishi Launched A Luxury Brand Named ‘Ultima’ In The Mid 1990s

Are you a “brand snob”? You know, the kind of car buyer who values the draw of an upscale name above all else? Look, like many people I’m not immune to being swayed by the cache of a high-end marque, but there have been exceptions to the rule over the years.

Cadillac’s name used to carry some weight with the public, but hardly anyone was convinced that the J-car-based 1982 Cimarron was anything more than a Chevy Cavalier with a different badge. There’s a limit to how much you can fool people.

At the same time, nobody thought people would buy a $40,000 Japanese car with an unknown “L” logo on the grille in 1989. They were wrong: Buyers saw the excellence of the product and bought the shit out of it regardless of the unknown brand.

I started to think about this and wanted to imagine a certain scenario: In the mid-nineties, if vehicles with impressive, unique qualities had been built under a brand-new, unknown brand, would they have sold? Let me tell you story of the fictional Turin-designed Ultima brand, and you can judge for yourself.

Mothballed Masterpieces

From the Lamborghini Countach down to the Mark I VW Golf, many of your favorite cars were likely developed by styling houses separate from the company that built them. Foremost might be legendary Italian firms like Giugiaros’ Ital Design and Bertone — designers who developed concepts that European manufacturers often made into production cars in the sixties through the eighties. By the early nineties, though, you’ll see far fewer cars being completely credited to such outside contractors. Maybe it was cost cutting (“we have designers at home”) that brought this work in-house, but for whatever reason a change was afoot; Bertone even went bankrupt in 2014.

Bertone and Ital continued to make concept cars in the nineties, but they were often not built en masse by the Italian makes they were branded as. There are a few outstanding Alfa and Lancia concepts from this time period that ended up as merely one-offs — quite a shame when you imagine the potential they had for these brands.

For example, the Bertone-developed Lancia Kayak was a very smooth looking coupe from 1994 based on a front wheel drive Kappa platform (successor the large Thema). Besides its inherent Italian style, the rounded tail and covered headlamp-nose seemed to capture some American sensibilities as well, like a finely honed Lincoln Mark VIII or Buick Riviera. This is rather odd considering that they had as much chance of landing on U.S. soil as Carlos Ghosn.

Another Bertone concept from this era turned out to be ahead of its time and prescient about the future. The idea of the “crossover” SUV hadn’t been introduced yet, but Bertone appears to have made just that with the 1997 Alfa Sportut. As odd as it might have seemed at the time, it’s ironic that this type of machine is what’s helping keep that brand afloat today.

These ideas seemed worthy of production to me, but what company other than Lancia and Alfa could have made them? Obviously, Bertone should have looked to the other side of the globe.

Challenge From The East

“If it bleeds, we can kill it.” So said Arnold Schwarzenegger about the beast in the film The Terminator, but he could have been talking about the German luxury car industry in the late eighties. Absurdly high prices and inefficient building practices made this lucrative market ripe for the picking, and the Japanese had the audacity to challenge them. European-style road manners, some American decadence, and well-known Japanese dependability could be found in upscale new brands such as Honda’s Acura, Toyota’s Lexus and Nissan’s Infiniti (Mazda’s planned high-end Amati brand was cancelled at the 11^th hour).

Ironically, just as firms like Ital Design were seemingly contributing less to Italian production cars during this time, they found success in pawning their skills to Asian firms. Giugiaro’s work came to life in cars like the Subaru SVX, Daewoo products, and the Toyota Aristo (a model sold here as the Lexus GS300).

What about those unproduced Bertone concepts I’m so fond of? Is there an Asian automaker that could have made those? My choice might surprise you.

You Can Tune A Starion But You Can’t Tuna Fish

There are large, multinational companies, and then there is Mitsubishi. You’re well aware of their car production, but some of you might not know of all the other things they were involved in making. What other things? Try everything.

Electronics? Sure. Look at this cool Mitsubishi Z-40 stereo of theirs from the eighties that I found at a thrift store with a vertical record player and awesome rather meaningless illuminated technical graphics on the front. Look at the doors that open to reveal more buttons, and what appears at first to be a second tape deck but is actually just tape storage. The ultimate trick is the illuminated record needle that you can see through a clear window behind that printed grid on the front.

You want more non-car-related Mitsubishi stuff? What about big marine V12 engines to power things like fishing trawlers? They made them. Oh, but Mitsubishi did that one better: they even sold canned tuna procured from these Mitsu-motored boats! It’s dolphin safe! They should fill the glove box of new Mirages with this as a promotion.

Naturally, this company had more than enough skill to bring the Bertone concepts to the U.S. market. Still, Mitsubishi would almost certainly have needed to create a new brand like the other Japanese names did to set themselves a step higher than their more proletarian Honda/Toyota offerings. Ultima would have been the Mitsubishi’s Lexus-like boutique marque with the audacity offer an Italian-penned reliable products that would have made sense for top earning Americans.

We’d start with just three cars (after all, Lexus, Acura and Infiniti started with just two models each). Let’s take a tour of the complete Ultima lineup for 1995.

Eight Cylinders? Ha! Ultima XII

“In the rarified air of exclusive twelve-cylinder sedans, only one offers the finest in Italian styling from Milan: the Ultima XII”

The top European brands fought for supremacy in the early nineties with the number of cylinders under the hoods of their top cars. Jaguar brought back a V12 model from years past, while Mercedes and BMW followed suit with similar cylinder counts in their uber-sedans. It didn’t matter that a V8 could rather easily be made to equal the power of such a complex motor when pure smoothness and being top dog were the goals.

Rumors of a Lexus twelve cylinder were always there but ultimately the only Toyota product that saw such a motor was the Japan-only Century executive sedan of 1997. Nissan developed a motor with this cylinder count for racing, but not the street. Here is where Mitsubishi would have turned the tables by combining two V6 motors to create a twelve-pot luxury super sedan, and something that looks like that Lancia Kayak would have been just the car to put it in. Hell, the Lancia grille even looks a lot like the neo-Pontiac split-nose aesthetic that Mitsubishi was using in this era. Here’s the Kayak show car again:

Of course, we’ll need to do a lot of work since the Kayak was obviously a front-wheel-drive two door coupe; painfully obvious actually. While the Kayak looked great from some angles the anteater-like front overhang and abbreviated tail looked disproportionate in other views like the one above. Almost any car could benefit from bigger wheels, but the Kayak really seems to suffer here as well. Also, the thing needs to get bigger and has to grow more doors.

Here then is the Ultima XII:

Stretching the Kayak to long four door doesn’t hurt the look; if anything it improves the parts I was having issues with. We need to add room for rear passengers and, of course, the front mounted V-12 made from essentially combining two Mitsubishi V6 engines together to drive the rear wheels (and possibly the fronts as well).

The front grille would have translucent covers for the lights to allow flash-to-pass, but they would raise for night driving as seen in this animation:

In the back the rounded tail would be rather unique amongst the other high-end offerings of the time. Subtle Bertone logos sit on each C pillar:

Inside, I’ve tried to play up the sweeping look of the nose with the dashboard, even adding an analog clock top dead center where the badge might be on the grille. What appears to be a tongue sticking out of the dashboard’s “smile” holds the radio and climate controls.

As I mentioned earlier, this Ultima XII seems to visually (and functionally) bridge the gap between American and European luxury cars, and that split personality will be reflected in the instruments as well. In basic form, the sweep of dashboard contains a digital speedometer flanked by fuel and temperature readouts, very much like your average Lincoln Town Car. However, go into “sport” mode and a panel (similar to the shape of the airbag cut line on the passenger’s side) lowers on top of the dash in front of the driver. Now you have an analog-style graphic tachometer and additional engine monitoring gauges for you to peruse as you go all Seven Series with your big Ultima.

The “sport” mode could naturally tighten up the suspension and steering; with a touch of a button, you would change your A8 into a Cadillac Fleetwood. Somehow this Jekyll and Hyde personality might be just what the American market- a land of potholed city streets as well as smooth mountain passes- would want.

Ultima(te) Soft Roader? Ultima Mojave

“Supreme luxury, all terrain capability and Italian design were an impossible combination to find: until now with Ultima Mojave.”

Many would claim that the first “luxury” crossover didn’t appear until 1998 when the Lexus RX300 (Toyota Harrier) and the Mercedes ML class hit the market. If you weren’t around at the time, these things were the right cars at the right time and quickly became top sellers for their respective brands.

It would seem that an upscale, Italian designed soft-roader would have been a major hit had it been released a few years earlier, and that’s just what the Ultima Mojave is. Based on that Bertone Alfa Sportut, the Mitusbishi-built Ultima version, of course, would have some kind of Mitsubishi V6 under the hood pumping through an all-wheel-drive system (yes, I know the Sportut was first shown in 1997 but let’s use some artistic license and imagine it being available in 1995).

I’ve made some visual changes to the design for the US market to turn the Sportut into the Ultima Mojave. First, the Alfa grille gives way to that full-width Ultima grille as on the Ultima XII with lights under clear covers to allow for flash-to-pass capability. The rather dainty Alfa rims are replaced by tougher-looking Montero Sport style wheels (but likely more street-focused rubber could be an option). Naturally, those weird-ass fender mirrors on the Sportut are gone. Note the hidden door handles.

I wasn’t crazy about the grey lower body panel look on the front of the Sportut not being repeated in back on the Alfa; seems a bit unbalanced and makes it too front-heavy looking. On the Mojave, I’ve put the grey panels on front and rear; it seems to work better from a visual and practical point of view (rock and stone chips). The round tire-shape on the rear of the Sportut has been extended backwards to house a larger spare, and taillights are sunken into the grey body area (and the handle for the side-opening rear door is concealed in the right taillight). Notice the rear window wiper that sweeps an arc that follows the top of the spare.

You see elements of, well, Honda Element and even an overall aesthetic that’s kind of toned-down-VehiCross, but before those cars were introduced. When you’re an unknown brand, you need to offer something totally new and different; the Mojave would have certainly been that.

Fresh Touring Origination? WTF? Ultima Lanai

“Challenging the best sport coupes from Europe is a task best avoided, unless you have the grand touring prowess of the Ultima Lanai”

What about just one more car to complete the Ultima lineup? Would I have found another Bertone or Ital Design creation to bring to life? Actually, no, since Mitsubishi had an underrated little GT car we could have used called the FTO, which stood for “Fresh Touring Origination”. Yes, I have no clue what that means either, but critics have citied this car as a real hidden gem.

This front-drive V6 powered coupe was positioned as a “junior” 3000GT that had a rather different look for a Japanese car of the era, including a rear view that was rather reminiscent of the concurrent Alfa GTV. The FTO won the Japanese Car of the Year trophy and was rather highly rated by Western journalists that tried it; they praised the power and even found the road manners more pleasing than its bigger 3000GT brother.

Some critics felt the FTO was the 3000GT that we deserved in America, but despite the accolades the FTO never made it past the shores of Japan (at least not as new cars). Why was that? My guess is that this sublime little touring car would have been an odd fit in the extroverted Eclipse/3000GT ecosystem of 1990s US Mitsubishi; it also wasn’t cheap. Still, those characteristics would have ticked all the boxes to fill out the lower end of the Ultima lineup perfectly.

In front the rather run-of-the-mill early nineties Boy Racer nose of the FTO is replaced by a small chrome Ultima grille, toned down a bit from the big sedan considering the more sporting nature of what we’ll call the Ultima Lanai. Pop up lights live in the apertures that the FTO filled with Supra or 3000GT style glass covered units.

Finally a great, enigmatic Mitsubishi car would have had a perfect high-end platform to let American enthusiasts see what they were missing out on.

It’s Not A Dealership, It’s A Gallery

Forget about a small area in a Mitsubishi store to move these thing; Ultimas would have been sold in standalone dealerships. Ultima, however, would have taken it a step further than the competition. The idea would be to present these cars in a “gallery” type of format as pieces of art, both inside and outside the showroom. In doing this, the implication would that other high-end brand vehicles are just cars; Ultimas would have been shown as art.

You know, in some recent posts our Mercedes Streeter has talked about going into the Smart Center in Lake Bluff, Illinois which was also set up like an art gallery; the experience at a young age seems to have shaped her lifelong love of these funky little cars (serious, she owns six). It’s impossible to overstate how important presentation, staging, and positioning of a product is.

Maybe we could get a big deal architect like Frank Gehry to design a funky Ultima gallery. At the time of our 1995 Ultima launch he was working on the iconic Gugneheim Museum Bilbau in Spain. If you want cool, controversial and eye-catching designs, he’s your guy:

We can imagine Gehry creating a dealership design like the scribble you see below:

Weird, right? Yet you’re looking at it. Lots of typical Gehry flourishes, but also presenting the cars outside of the dealership as sculptures would be in an art gallery. Notice also what look like “reflecting pools” adjacent to the displayed cars that are actually glass skylights for the subterranean administrative offices below the forecourt.

The Next Lexus, Or The Next Sterling?

You could argue that Ultima wouldn’t have stood a chance. Infiniti struggled at first here, and Mazda chose to axe their Amati luxury division before it even began, but did either of them really have products Americans wanted? I mean, as much as most Autopians love the Q45, it just didn’t connect with buyers; honestly it wasn’t until the Z-car based G series that Infiniti really hit their stride.

The products that Mazda was going to sell as “Amatis” included what was released as the Mazda Millenia in America; neither that car nor the other would-be Amatis that were sold overseas really set the market on fire, so the decision to stop before they started seems sound. Was there really room for another Lexus or Acura in an already crowded near-luxury market?

Maybe, and here’s why: because Ultima would have given people what they couldn’t have gotten anywhere else. An Italian styled saloon with Japanese-reliability and a V12 under the hood? A performance crossover before people even knew what that was, with a Milan-penned skin to boot? What about a Japanese touring coupe that wasn’t styled or developed in Europe but that felt like it was? No other company from Asia, Europe, or America had anything like that. The icing on the cake? Ask our own Stephen Gossin about the reliability of his $220 Mitsubishi-built Dodge Stratus coupe, the Car That Won’t Die; I wouldn’t touch a V12 BMW with a ten-foot pole.

Sadly, the fate of Ultima might have ultimately been reliant on the “Brand whores” and the hopes that they would suddenly make it into The Next Big Thing. It’s tragic to think that the fate of the world’s best cars has always rested in their Cartier or Rolex-clad arms.

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