If you’ve been eagerly awaiting the fourth-generation Mitsubishi Outlander, today is your lucky day. Mitsubishi finally has a debut date for the 2022 edition: February 16, 2021, and the venue will be an online video on the Mitsubishi Motors North America’s YouTube channel. That’s still three weeks from now, but that channel has a teaser video of the the new SUV in action.
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In it, a camouflaged Outlander does its best Lancer Evolution impression, drifting along in gravel and snow. It also does some light mud bogging and fording of some pretty shallow water. A Montero this is not.
In fact, it’s not even all Mitsubishi. As part of Nissan’s majority stake ownership in Mitsubishi Motors, the Outlander is expected to share a platform and many major components with the latest Nissan Rogue. That even includes Nissan’s 181-horsepower, 2.5-liter inline-four mated to a CVT for entry-level models. Of course, the Outlander is also known for its plug-in hybrid variants, and the PHEV might use a 2.4-liter mill with Mitsubishi’s own plug-in system. That could see a near doubling of the battery-only range, from 22 to 43 miles.
Mitsubishi claims that the new vehicle will combine “everything we know about on and off-road driving put into a single Outlander. Its lead engineer, Kentaro Honda, expands on that, saying, “We took everything we know about on- and off-road driving from the rally experiences to apply the latest Super All-Wheel Control technology in our newly developed platform.”
If we were to guess, PHEV models will use Mitsubishi’s dual-motor Super All-Wheel Control system. The latter will also feature the Evo’s yaw control, which can split torque between the front and rear wheels, or between the front wheels alone.
One thing that’s clear from the videos is that the Outlander will maintain the look of the Engelberg Tourer concept shown in 2019. While the naked Outlander was leaked last month, this camouflaged version confirms the bold design.
If you would like to see the live reveal online, tune in to on the 16th at 3:00pm.
