THE CENTRO L300
Two years ago I wrote a very short post on cars with timeless designs. I wrote that I liked cars that change as little as possible or where one generation's appearance is stretched for the equivalent of more than 2 generations in ordinary models. I gave the example of the Lada, the Mitsubishi L300, Pajero Mk1/Hyundai Galloper, Mercedes-Benz G-Class, Volkswagen Beetle and Land Rover Defender.
The reasons why I like this state of affairs is that car manufacturers can concentrate on incremental, under-the-hood improvements to their cars while minimizing cosmetic changes, thus maximizing the interchangeability of body panels and bolt-on parts as well as making the cars more upgradeable.
Just see the episode of Wheeler Dealers that I’ve included below to see what I mean.
Wheeler Dealers G Wagon Episode
In this episode, the presenters spruced up a 1996 Mercedes Benz G-Wagen with some contemporary body panels and made it as good as new.
For car manufacturers, this has its advantages and disadvantages as well. For one, this means that they do not need to keep continuously investing in new tooling to make the parts of their vehicles—they just need to keep their existing equipment working for as long as they can—thus saving themselves money on manufacturing and development. Drawbacks include lower replacement rates—there are indeed people who like to have the “newest” things so these people would prefer to have regularly updated designs—and indeed, a new facelift would spur purchases of new vehicles. Furthermore, without regular facelifts, car manufacturers stand to get left behind in the styling department which means that consumers may get the impression that a company is simply old-fashioned.
There are conceivably ways to get around this limitation such as through good servicing (paid maintenance), sale of spare parts and cosmetic and technical upgrades.
The Centro L300
So now we look at the stories Mitsubishi L300, a van sporting its characteristic “box-type” design language—squared off and angular lines, square headlights and square grille. Inside, it sports a 15 inch Bakelite steering wheel with a 5 speed transmission mounted on the steering column. A tried and tested design that has survived unchanged since 1991. It is a veritable dinosaur in the car scene.
L300 interior
Madalas makita ito sa pelikula noong 90s -BG
Posted by Kami ang Batang 90s on Thursday, 10 September 2015
The iconic L300 van
The original consumer version of the L300 had a van body style. A body style made iconic by the numerous Filipino action movies using this type of vehicle as transportation for baddies and kidnap scenes as seen in the above meme.
This body style was eventually phased out and replaced by newer designs such as the Space Gear pictured below.
Since then the Mitsubishi L300 has been sold continuously in the Philippines as a cab and rolling chassis under the name L300 FB Exceed chassis. Truck body builders such as Centro and Almazora would then build bodies for it. One would commonly see pick up, container truck and passenger variants of it, among others.
Optional Truck Bodies
But the van configuration has since passed into memory.
Until…
Yes, that’s right! Centro, an enterprising truck body builder, decided to breathe new life into this classic and timeless design.
According to its president:
We saw the upsurge in the nationwide demand in the shuttle segment of the mass transport industry, and realized that most of the reliable Japanese shuttle models have only 15 seats or less yet have a price tag of over P1 million. We therefore saw the demand for a minibus converted from a Japanese chassis cab with over 15 seats yet costs less than P1 million. Our answer is the L300 XV with 17 seats and at an introductory price of only P898,000.
Good news indeed and I can see this being bought by some consumers who aren’t willing to part with upwards of a million pesos on a passenger van for home use.
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