Japanese officials raided Mitsubishi's headquarters and a plant in Nagoya, Japan, as part of an ongoing investigation about the company's mileage scandal.
Not long after announcing it lied about the fuel economy ratings of even more vehicles, Mitsubishi Motor Corp.’s nightmare continued as Japanese authorities raided the company’s headquarters to seize documents and information for an ongoing investigation.
Government officials also raided the company’s plant in Nagoya as part of the effort.
“We want to thoroughly investigate the circumstances that led to this situation,” said Transport Minister Keiichi Ishii, according to Reuters.
The government launched the investigation after Japan’s sixth-largest automaker revealed many of its sport-utility vehicles had incorrect mileage figures applied to them – a stop sale order was placed on the SUVs.
The discovery wasn’t entirely shocking as earlier this year Mitsubishi admitted to falsifying the results of mileage testing on vehicles for 25 years. The revelation occurred after Nissan challenged the ratings applied to the makers’ microcars. Those so-called “kei cars,” including the Roox hatchback, were produced by Mitsubishi but sold under Nissan nameplates.
(Mitsubishi panel: corporate culture ruled out “no.” Click Here for the story.)
The smaller maker admitted rigging the numbers to improve its appeal in a highly competitive but relatively low-profit market segment. It subsequently acknowledged cheating on a variety of other products, though Mitsubishi officials continue to insist the subterfuge only impacted vehicles sold in the Japanese home market.
The newest issue came to light as part of an internal investigation – demanded by Nissan officials which bought a third of the automaker for $2.2 billion – to determine how the initial cheating happened. The investigation and subsequent raid on the automaker came as result of the internal query.
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The findings showed that despite being faced with impossible goals and a shortage of resources, engineers at Mitsubishi Motors Corp. were caught up in a corporate culture that wouldn’t allow them to say, “No.”
The report, compiled by a team of outside investigators, had harsh words for the scandal-plagued automaker, which admitted in April it had rigged mileage numbers on vehicles sold in Japan for as much as a quarter century.
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“There was utterly no consciousness that the company must work as one to make and sell cars,” according to the 37-page report. Mitsubishi, it concluded, is a company “not having the manufacturing philosophy of an automaker.”