Mitsubishi's Australian boss echoes Iacocca

"If you can find a better-built, better-backed car, buy it."

The tag line sounds like vintage Lee Iacocca. But it's from Mitsubishi TV commercials that have aired this year in Australia.

"I shamelessly admit I copied it," laughs Thomas Phillips, CEO of Mitsubishi Motors Australia Ltd. Phillips is a 40-year veteran of Australia's auto industry. He worked at General Motors' Holden Ltd. unit and Toyota Motor Corp. Australia, where he was director of sales and marketing. He joined Mitsubishi in 2000.

"I'm no Lee Iacocca," Phillips adds, "but the concept still works."

In the early 1980s, Iacocca staked his reputation - and the future of a nearly bankrupt Chrysler Corp. - on his TV commercials. He challenged American consumers: "If you can find a better car, buy it."

Mitsubishi Australia was in nearly as dire straits when Phillips decided to echo Iacocca's line.

A steady worldwide barrage of negative news had battered Mitsubishi. Quality and financial problems, and the news of DaimlerChrysler AG's pullout from an alliance with the Japanese automaker, had hurt Mitsubishi sales.

Mitsubishi Australia faced additional downbeat news. In May 2004, Mitsubishi said it would close its engine plant in Lonsdale, Australia.

Many consumers thought that meant the end of Mitsubishi's Australian assembly plant, in Tonsley, a suburb of Adelaide. Mitsubishi was preparing to pull out of Australia, they figured.

But they were wrong. Mitsubishi had just finished investing $189.4 million in the Tonsley plant to launch a car. There are no plans to close the plant.

Mitsubishi's market share in Australia hit a low point of 4.9 percent last June. That share stood at 9.2 percent as recently as 2000.

Mitsubishi ranked behind the other three automakers that build vehicles in Australia: Toyota Motor Corp., Holden and Ford Motor Co. It also trailed such importers as Nissan Motor Co.

The bad news peaked for Mitsubishi Australia last October. A series of negative media reports assailed the state of the company.

At that point, Phillips says, "92 percent of the market thought we were going out of business. We had to make a statement."

In November, Phillips began shooting TV commercials with the "If you can find…" tag line. Like Iacocca in the classic Chrysler ads, Phillips comes across as a boss who connects with viewers on a personal level because he is willing to put his reputation on the line.

Looking the camera in the eye, he admits: "We've had some problems." Then he finishes with the commandeered exhortation.

The "better-backed" part of the line, which Iacocca never used, refers to a five-year warranty Mitsubishi Australia initiated in December.

Print ads emphasized that Mitsubishi Australia wasn't about to fold up and go away. Under the headline "It's not the end of the line. It's the beginning," one ad acknowledged: "The Mitsubishi name has been in the papers a lot lately. Not always in the motoring section."

The ads worked. Within 30 days, only half of Australians thought Mitsubishi was going out of business, down from 92 percent.

Mitsubishi's sales in Australia jumped 10.0 percent in January over the same month of 2004. In the first four months of 2005, sales rose 14.4 percent from a year earlier. During the same four months, Mitsubishi's U.S. sales plunged by 40.2 percent from the year-ago period.

From January through April, Mitsubishi's Australian market share rose to 6.3 percent, from 5.8 percent in all of 2004. The increase came despite a paucity of new models.

Mitsubishi Australia is assembling focus groups to discuss marketing concepts. The sessions begin with owners of various brands discussing vehicle marketing in general. They do not indicate which company is sponsoring the focus group.

Phillips notes that participants say without prompting how much they like the "If you can find" ads. He says that ad agency executives who conduct the focus groups tell him that "in 20 years of leading such groups, they've never seen such a spontaneous reaction."

You may e-mail James B. Treece at