Mitsubishi is improving its customer offering for the third year in succession with price reductions or added specification to its range of cars and LCVs with an average value of 5.3%.

Examples of the changes include the reduction in price for the three-door Colt hatchback 1.3 Equippe by £465 to £9,495 and the new special edition Colt 1.6 Mirage with £1,200 of added specification, including alloy wheels and a body styling kit.

Announcing the initiative at yesterday's Mitsubishi dealers' conference managing director Jim Tyrrell said: “Due to our increased sales performance again this year we have been able to negotiate with our partners, MMC, either lower prices, enhanced specification or at least, no price increase at all for our 2002 model year vehicles.”

Year-to-date sales, he said, are up by 38.2% and Mitsubishi is expecting to sell nearly 22,000 vehicles this year.

Examples of list price changes (effective from December 17):
Previous OTR retail price/New OTR retail price
Colt 1.3 Equippe manual - £9,960/£9,495
Space Star 1.6 Equippe auto - £13,010/£12,995
Carisma 1.8 GDI Equippe five-door manual - £13,980/£12,995
Galant 2.0 Classic manual - £17,295/£15,995 (with ABS, alloy wheels and front arm rests)

In January 2000, Mitsubishi reduced list prices by up to 15% and at the beginning of this year by up to 12%.

There have also been some straight price increases. The Colt 1.3 Classic manual will go up from £8,460 to £8,495; the Space Star 1.3 Classic manual goes up from £9,960 to £9,995 and Space Star 1.8 GDI Elegance manual from £13,980 to £13,995.

The company is also due to announce new low finance options to support the sales push.