Sigma History

In the late 1960's 'Made in Japan' suggested nick-nacks and cheap toys found on the shelves of variety stores and likely to quickly break. But gradually the standard and range of items flowing out of Japan improved. The transistor radio took Australia, and the rest of the world by storm. The Japanese car was also beginning to gain acceptance around the world.

The rise of the Japanese car in Australia was slower and steadier than elsewhere, but ultimately perhaps just as impressive. At first, the cars seemed small and not powerful enough for Australian conditions, but from the start it was also clear that they were very well-built and equipped.

But still Australian drivers would need a lot of convincing that four-cylinder cars, "the staple diet in Japan" were what they wanted. They just weren't made for Kingswood Country, the country into which Ben Chifley had welcomed "Australia's Own Car", the Holden, in 1948. Since then, Holdens had grown bigger almost by the year. In 1960, Ford introduced the Falcon, and in 1963 Chrysler entered the big car market with the Valiant.

But when the first of the world "oil shocks" occurred in 1973, suddenly big, gas-guzzling cars stopped seeming like such a good idea. In Australia, Nissan and Toyota, who by that time had been importing and assembling smaller cars here for many years, found themselves in the right place at the right time.

By 1975, Toyota had become Australia's third biggest seller and the company's four-cylinder compact cars were neatly filling a good-sized hole in the domestic market. Holden and Ford took note and decided to try out some smaller cars of their own.
Chrysler Australia also acted, entering into an agreement with Mitsubishi Motors to produce vehicles for the small-car market. But they took things one step further. Chrysler started to think about a four-cylinder car which would specifically suit Australian drivers and conditions.

Chrysler saw in the Mitsubishi Sigma a bigger car, a more powerful car than the traditional four-cylinder car. They felt the Sigma could convince the car-buyer of Australia that a four-cylinder car could do the job of a family car. At the same time on the other side of the world, another oil crisis was looming in the aftermath of a religious revolution in Iran in 1979.

The environmental movement of the 1970s had also seen an increase in public awareness that the planet was running out of fossil fuels. Big cars seemed increasingly to be a thing of the past. There was a general recognition or an expectation that large cars were doomed. Thus, with the car industry around the world rapidly changing, the Sigma became a huge sales success for Chrysler in Australia.

Chrysler Australia, with facilities to produce small-medium cars already in place, seemed to be in the box seat. But in the wake of the oil crisis, the parent company in the US was in grave trouble. The local Valiant was now struggling in sales, it had become the large gas-guzzler the public now despised. As part of a strategy to save the company from going under, they decided to pull out of Australia.

This is when the company's existing relationship with Mitsubishi came into play. Chrysler wanted to sell. Mitsubishi were looking to become global. At that time in Australia there were very high tariff levels. So, if you had aspirations to sell cars in volume in Australia and be competitive in the market, you had to be with in those tariff walls. This was undoubtedly a factor in Mitsubishi's decision to purchase Chrysler Australia.

The buy-out took place, and on 1 October 1980, South Australian Premier David Tonkin, ushered in a new era for the Australian car industry, publicly announcing that Chrysler Australia, based in Adelaide, had been taken over by Mitsubishi. The Japanese firm had established a presence amongst the "Big Three" of the motor industry, an industry traditionally dominated by the boys from Detroit.