Mitsubishi celebrates a century of innovation

IN 1917, Japan was one of the world’s young rising powers. Having emerged from a long self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world barely 50 years earlier, the nation had shocked the great powers with its stunning defeat of Imperial Russia in the brief war of 1905, and was growing in strength and capability.

In that year, that much of the rest of the world was tearing itself to pieces in what would later be known as World War I, one of Japan’s new industrial stalwarts, the Mitsubishi zaibatsu, built the first production car in Asia, the Model A. Twenty-two of the cars, which vaguely resembled the Ford Model T, were manufactured by the Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Co., marking the beginning of what is now the world’s 25th largest automaker (by sales).