At first glance the teaser dis­plays the now famil­iar cues we asso­ciate with Mitsubishi’s  new Lancer, but the pro­por­tions appear a good deal smaller, and the head­lights are def­i­nitely rounded, as opposed to the stan­dard Lancer’s sharp lights.

Spec­u­la­tion is rife about the new vehi­cle, but the two like­li­est can­di­dates are the Con­cept cX and the new face-​​lifted Colt. We’ll see what tran­spires come Octo­ber 2nd.

Press Release:

MITSUBISHI 2008 PARIS MOTOR SHOW PRESS CONFERENCE

Three World Premieres

• Press Con­fer­ence — Octo­ber 2nd at 10.45 AM, Hall 3
• Keynote speak­ers: Kurihara-​​san (Head of Prod­uct Strat­egy at MMC) and Tim Tozer (MME’s Pres­i­dent & CEO)
• MMSP (Mitsubishi’s motor sports team) rep­re­sen­ta­tives also available

Mit­subishi Motors are happy to wel­come you to their stand for their Press Con­fer­ence at the forth­com­ing Paris Motor Show, and the unveil­ing of a string of sig­nif­i­cant new prod­ucts, on Octo­ber 2nd at 10.45 AM, Hall 3.

Three World Premieres:

• Lancer Sport­back — Mitsubishi’s dis­tinc­tive 5-​​door “Sports Hatch” for the C/​D segments.
• Rac­ing Lancer — Mitsubishi’s entry at the 2009 Dakar Rally, mod­elled after Lancer Sport­back and pow­ered by an all-​​new 3.0 V6 turbo-​​diesel engine.
• Mit­subishi Motors will reserve a third world pre­mière for the Paris Motor Show (see below), which can only be dis­cussed on Octo­ber 2nd.

A Euro­pean Pre­mière:
Paris will also see the Euro­pean pre­mière of the 240PS Lancer Ral­liart, in both Sports Saloon and Sport­back (5-​​door hatch) forms.

Suzuki has piqued inter­est ever since the unveil­ing of the Kiza­shi con­cept back in 2007. After all, it’s not often we see a large car con­cept from the car­maker, known for it’s rally and motor­bike her­itage and a his­tory of com­pact (and very com­pe­tent) small cars.

The new Kiza­shi fol­lows some of the flow­ing lines we were shown with the Kiza­shi 2 con­cept, while clearly show­ing a refine­ment from the con­cept to an almost pro­duc­tion appear­ance. Gone are the daz­zling paint jobs, 4WD ride height, crossover sports wagon styling, and head­lights. Instead ver­sion 3 of the Kiza­shi rides on 21 inch, 9 spoke chrome wheels, sports a new, sharper head­light design, wider split grille, a more mus­cu­lar front end, and 350z style rear haunches becom­ing almost a 4 door sports car.

Along with the stun­ning styl­is­tic update come some juicy details. The new Kiza­shi will carry a 300HP ver­sion of the GM’s new DOHC 24-​​valve 3.6L V6, come with Suzuki’s advanced i-​​AWD sys­tem mated to a paddle-​​shifted 6 speed auto­matic trans­mis­sion and will com­fort­ably seat 5 persons.

It’s one of the most solid close-​​to-​​production con­cepts we’ve seen and Suzuki claims we will see pro­duc­tion of the Kiza­shi in some form in 2010, with con­struc­tion planned to be at Suzuki’s new Sagara plant in Japan. Here’s to see­ing Suzuki build this, and since we’re wish­ing, we might as well throw in a wish for the X-​​HEAD too.

Kiza­shi 3 Concept:

The Con­cept RA has appeared in Detroit look­ing like a cross between the new Lancer EVO and (per­haps) the lat­est gen­er­a­tion USDM Mit­subishi Eclipse, or even an Audi TT.

The strictly con­cept only (Sorry, guys and girls) Con­cept RA sports a 2.2 litre, DOHC 16-​​valve 150kw/​201HP/​420nm high out­put, clean burn diesel engine, as part of Mitsubishi’s new drive towards eco-​​friendly per­for­mance sports cars.

In order to achieve low con­sump­tion while not sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance means the Con­cept RA fea­tures Mitsubishi’s pro­pri­etary MIVEC vari­able valve con­trol tech­nol­ogy, an all alu­minum space frame, vari­able diffuser/​variable geom­e­try tur­bocharger, peizo­elec­tric injec­tor sys­tem and also sports some impact resis­tant, recy­clable plas­tic resin pan­els as part of it’s construction.

Envi­ron­men­tal fea­tures include a new cat­alytic con­verter sys­tem that com­bines a diesel oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst (DOC), NOx trap cat­a­lyst (NTC) and diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) in addi­tion to the highly effi­cient 2.2 litre clean burn­ing diesel.

Of course, the Con­cept RA sports Full­time 4WD, Twin Clutch SST Trans­mis­sion, and the new S-​​AWC (Super-​​All Wheel Con­trol) most notably seen on the new EVO. As men­tioned before on IJ, S-​​AWC is a com­bi­na­tion of exist­ing tech­nolo­gies, Active Cen­ter Dif­fer­en­tial, Active Yaw Con­trol, ABS and Active Sta­bil­ity Control.

Unfor­tu­nately though, all this is to be shelved as the car is designed purely as a con­cept, and won’t chal­lenge either Honda’s offer­ing in the new CRZ (CRX) or Toyota’s rumored new ‘AE86’.