Strip the Mitsubishi Xpander back to its specification sheet and the character is already there: Petrol engine, 77 kW. Mitsubishi built from 2017, as electrification stopped being an experiment and the crossover took every market.
The background
The Mitsubishi Xpander is a compact multi-purpose vehicle (MPV) manufactured by Mitsubishi Motors since 2017. Prominently marketed as a "crossover MPV", the vehicle was introduced in July 2017 in Indonesia, where the vehicle was manufactured and sold as a high-volume model. Introductions in other markets started since 2018, and the vehicle is mainly sold in emerging countries in Southeast Asia along with several Latin American, African and Middle Eastern markets.
It was the fourth best-selling Mitsubishi Motors model globally in 2018 and 2019, and became its third best-selling model in 2021. In late 2019, a more rugged-looking variant was introduced as the Xpander Cross. A rebadged and redesigned variant of the Xpander, with mainly different front and rear fascias, is sold by Nissan as the second-generation Livina since February 2019.
The engineering
Power comes from Petrol engine; 77 kW is the published figure; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 1220 –. Work it out per tonne and you get about 63 horsepower — unhurried — enough for the job, not for the bragging. It shifts through a 5-speed Manual transmission / manual / 4-speed Automatic transmission / automatic / Continuously variable transmission / CVT. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 2775 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Mitsubishi Freeca / CMC Zinger / Mitsubishi Fuzion (Philippines). Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Suzuki Xbee, the Honda WR-V, the Chery Tiggo 8 — show what else the money bought that year. Its Mitsubishi stablemates include the Mitsubishi Lancer and the Mitsubishi 360.