As scandals continue to cloud the marketplace of the automotive world we now have learned of two of the executives at Mitsubishi who are stepping down. The company president, Tetsuro Aikawa and the executive vice president of quality and product strategy, Ryugo Nakao will both step down as of June 24 of this year. This is the latest update we have regarding the responsibility taken for the fuel economy numbers that have been reportedly falsified for many years. Of course the false fuel mileage numbers aren’t the only problems Mitsubishi has faced, but it seems this is the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back”.

Recently Nissan discovered a discrepancy in the reporting of the fuel mileage numbers on vehicles that they had partnered with Mitsubishi to produce. Once this information was discovered Mitsubishi revealed it had been cheating the number for over 25 years in a scandal that dates back to 1991. Not only have they cheated on the fuel number after models have been tested, but recent news has led us to believe there weren’t tests performed on some vehicles at all and the numbers put on the stickers were simply based upon a best guess from the mathematical calculations of the Mitsubishi engineers.

Not only is Mitsubishi Motors faced with at least $1 billion in compensation that will be owed to those who own their products but they now need to find a way to regain trust in the market for their vehicles. Recently Nissan purchased a 34 percent controlling stake in Mitsubishi Motors and will appoint at least one third of the board members including the chairman to ensure the strategies and practices of Mitsubishi align with Nissan to help bring back quality and trust to a name that we have known for many years.

It may seem odd that a person who has only been president of the company since June 2014, long after this scandal began, is one of those being relieved, but Aikawa has been part of Mitsubishi for a very long time and was part of the development of the vehicles from the brand for many years. The current CEO, Osamu Masuko will take over the responsibilities of the two departing executives until their jobs can be filled and is expected to remain as the CEO after this storm of scandal has passed.

Does this mean Nissan is in favor of Masuko as the appointed CEO? Possibly, but it seems there will be several more changes that are made before Nissan can feel comfortable as a major part of the Mitsubishi Motors team. Hopefully what we will see in the future is not only vehicles that are properly reported, but those that are properly tested as the Outlander plug-in hybrid is one of those that was presented to us with only desktop calculations performed and no actual testing done. So far Nissan has informed us their goal is to help Mitsubishi regain their good name and develop vehicles we can be excited about again in all markets that Mitsubishi has been in.