Team Mitsubishi Ralliart returned to Japan this week with more than another Asia Cross-Country Rally trophy. At a homecoming press conference near Tokyo's Haneda Airport, the team put a number on what Katsuhiko Taguchi and Takahiro Yasui had done: in 31 runnings of the event, no all-Japanese driver and co-driver pairing had won it outright before.
The result sheet alone did not carry that. Taguchi's Triton took the win by 2 minutes 25 seconds on August 15; the historical footnote came into focus once the team was back in Tokyo.
What the drivers added to the timing sheets
A homecoming conference is useful because it explains decisions the stage times only imply. Our report on the final leg noted, on the organizer's account, that Taguchi declined to chase the stage win and drove instead to avoid punctures and mistakes. At the conference he described that thinking himself: forcing himself to back off where backing off was what winning required, and pushing harder than the previous year only on the stages fast enough to allow it.
Yasui's account was less strategic and more human. For a co-driver, a single navigation error can erase days of disciplined work, and he described relentless pressure across the week — including, per Car Watch's account of the conference, crying from the tension night after night.
Why the new Pajero dominated the conversation
Team director Hiroshi Masuoka is the reason the Pajero kept coming up. He won the Dakar Rally outright in 2002 and 2003 — the first Japanese driver to take back-to-back victories there — in a Pajero, the 2003 car being the Pajero Evolution MPR10.
The nameplate is about to return. Mitsubishi announced on May 29 that a new Pajero will have its world premiere in autumn 2026, coming back to the Japanese market seven years after production of the Japan-spec model ended in 2019. Mitsubishi says it will use a modified version of the Triton's ladder frame — the Triton being, in competition form, the model Ralliart has now won AXCR with twice — along with a model-specific cabin and bespoke front and rear suspension.
At the conference, Masuoka linked the win to that launch, noting the flagship's arrival this autumn. Mitsubishi executive vice president Kyoya Ikarashi framed the new model as the opening of a new chapter for the company.
Masuoka then said the line that will travel furthest: he holds a "big dream and goal" of taking a third straight AXCR title next year, with the Pajero. The distinction matters, so to be precise — that was his personal ambition, voiced at a press conference. It was not an announced entry plan, and Mitsubishi has confirmed no such program.
Why a Pajero rally return would matter
Strip out the corporate scheduling and a tidy piece of symmetry remains. The man who took a Pajero to consecutive Dakar wins now runs a team that has taken a Triton to consecutive AXCR wins — and the Pajero arriving this autumn is built on a version of the Triton's frame.
Whether a competition-spec Pajero actually appears at the 2027 AXCR is entirely unconfirmed; the event's 2027 dates and host country have not been announced either. But the sport has rarely handed a manufacturer a neater setup, and Masuoka clearly knows it.