In the States, the Mitsubishi Outlander is one of a zillion SUVs out there on the roads – not one you see a whole lot of these days, granted, but it’s out there, nonetheless. Less known here is that in France, a pair of badge-engineered Outlanders live in Peugeot and Citroen dealerships across that country: Peugeot’s is called the 4007, while Citroen’s is the C-Crosser. The vagaries of why Peugeot and Citroen didn’t do their own, in favor of a facelifted, badge-engineered Mitsubishi is beyond the scope of this story, although surely Mitsubishi’s years of dominating the Dakar rally played some role.
No, the surprising thing is that Majorette, newly resurgent 3-inch manufacturer after years of languishing and bankruptcy, has opted to do all three versions. First, the good news: Majo has done away with their tinted-window fetish, and you can now see the excellent interior engraving therein. The Outlander had been out for a couple of years, but the 4007 and the C-Crosser just arrived in shops. Most of the casting – sides, wheels – is identical, save for the noses, which are radically different, and not just paint treatments on some sort of blank beak. All have the same five-spoke wheels and trailer hitch. But look closer: The Outlander, in blue here, has no roof rack, while the French-badged pair do. The Outlander’s license plate frame has a hard outline, while the other two lack that edge. The front-fender turn signals are daintier on the black Peugeot and gray Citroen. The chassis are different as well: Spare-tire detail is far greater in the Francophile pair than in the Mitsu. And on the Citroen’s tail panel, raised double Chevrons are molded into the tailgate. Then there’s the mystery of the chassis numbering: You’d think that three such close vehicles, sharing some variety of tooling as they seem to, would be numbered concurrently, or given an A/B/C suffix, something like this. Not so: the Outlander is 292G, the Peugeot is 205G, and the big Cit is 254J. Not at all the same, and a real head-scratcher.
What’s more, there are precious few die-cast companies – if any – that have done an entire contemporary range of badge-engineered siblings. Majorette’s commitment to doing all three versions of the Mitsubishi-based SUV is as surprising as it is commendable.