- Honda has issued a memorandum of understanding with Mitsubishi on the development of a new pickup.
- Based on the Triton, this new truck will be sold in Southeast Asian markets only.
- The truck is expected to launch in 2028.
Honda’s very first four-wheeled vehicle was a pickup truck, the T360 kei truck built for its home market in 1963. Since then, the H badge hasn’t been seen on many products with an exposed cargo bed, although the Ridgeline, introduced in the early 2000s, was an innovative product that worked excellently for light-duty use. Now, however, Honda is coming out with a proper body-on-frame pickup.
Just not in North America. A new memorandum of understanding has been signed between Mitsubishi and Honda, with the stated intent of developing a Honda-badged pickup by 2028. Said pickup will be based on the current Mitsubishi Triton and sold in the Southeast Asia market: Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, and so on.
Just how much Honda will be going into this new pickup, apart from the badge on the grille, remains to be seen. For comparison, the closely related Honda Prologue and Chevy Blazer EV shared a battery-based platform but zero exterior body panels, and they had all kinds of differences in interior appointments and software.
Currently, the Triton comes with two 2.4-liter engine options, one a basic naturally aspirated gasoline engine and the other a turbo-diesel with 201 horsepower and 347 pound-feet of torque. Honda could theoretically install a thriftier small-displacement turbocharged gasoline engine to differentiate its offering.
Or it could simply offer a badge-engineered Triton with a few cosmetic changes intended to broaden the Honda lineup in Southeast Asia. Given how prevalent two-wheeled transportation is in the area, Honda’s long history of building scooters and motorcycles locally means that it is already a well-established brand. It’s likely many customers might choose a Honda truck over a Mitsubishi just because the former says “Honda” on the back.
As far as Mitsubishi is concerned, that’s fine, as the trucks all come from the same factory. What is perhaps more interesting is that this is a two-way street, and Mitsubishi thus might release a rebadged Honda product in its turn. A return of the Lancer as a Civic wearing the triple-diamond badge? Stranger things have happened.
For North American consumers, however, Honda versions of the Triton aren’t about to start turning up in dealerships. The so-called 25 percent “Chicken Tax” on small pickup trucks is still in place, and Honda is already working on a replacement for the Ridgeline. With the U.S. mid-size truck market already dominated by the Toyota Tacoma, and with the Ranger and Colorado/Canyon making the segment even more competitive, it’s not a space Honda needs to have two pickup offerings in. Besides, Nissan and Mitsubishi are also working together on the next-gen Triton and Frontier, both bound for the U.S.
However, Mitsubishi could certainly use another vehicle in its U.S. lineup. This new pickup truck deal might only change the way traffic looks across the Pacific, but on this side of the water, you might eventually see some Honda-shaped Mitsubishis on the road.
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Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.