Soueast Lioncel: the Mitsubishi saloon with a Chinese badge

The Soueast Lioncel is a four-door saloon sold in China by Soueast under its own badge. It belongs to the Mitsubishi Mirage and Lancer family, the compact car line that Mitsubishi sold under a confusing variety of names depending on the market, and which is the subject of the English Wikipedia article on the Mirage.

Soueast Lioncel at a glance

English Wikipedia has no article on the Soueast Lioncel; the family is described on the Mitsubishi Mirage page, which is the only source used here. The Chinese model itself is covered only briefly there.

History of the Soueast Lioncel

A name that changed with the market

Mitsubishi has used the Mirage name since 1978, but almost never on its own. In Japan every generation was called Mirage; in the United States all but the first series carried the same badge. Elsewhere the same cars were sold as the Mitsubishi Colt, and the saloon and station wagon versions were widely marketed as the Mitsubishi Lancer, including in Japan, where the Mirage and the Lancer were sold side by side at different dealers.

In the United States and Canada the first four generations also reached the market through a venture with Chrysler, as the Dodge Colt and the Plymouth Champ and Colt, and later as the Eagle Vista and Summit. The Lancer name itself was complicated by Chrysler’s own, unrelated Dodge Lancer, until the DaimlerChrysler alliance of 2000 to 2004 left the name with Mitsubishi for North America.

The saloon in China

Because the family was sold under local names, the Chinese version received a name of its own: Lioncel. Soueast, the Fujian-based maker that built several Mitsubishi models for the Chinese market, sold the four-door saloon under that badge. The car follows the family recipe of the period — a compact front-wheel-drive saloon sharing its structure and mechanical parts with the hatchback versions sold elsewhere as the Mirage or Colt — and it was aimed at buyers who wanted a conventional three-box car rather than the small hatchbacks that dominated the class in Europe and Japan.

Design and features

• Four-door saloon body: the three-box version of Mitsubishi’s compact car family.
• Shared engineering: the saloon used the same platform and mechanical layout as the Mirage and Colt hatchbacks.
• Local badge: sold in China by Soueast rather than under the Mitsubishi name.
• Global family: the same basic car appeared as Mirage, Lancer and Colt in different markets.

Soueast Lioncel versions

• Soueast Lioncel: the Chinese four-door saloon.
• Mitsubishi Lancer: the name used for the saloon in most export markets.
• Mitsubishi Mirage: the Japanese and later global name for the hatchback range.
• Mitsubishi Colt: the name used in Europe and in the Chrysler-badged versions of the early generations.

The Lioncel is the saloon of the same family as the Soueast Freeca people carrier and the Soueast Delica van. More cars are in the Soueast collection.

Sources

• Mitsubishi Mirage, English Wikipedia: naming history of the Mirage, Lancer and Colt family