Talk:Mitsubishi Motors Motor Sports

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Given that (a) the vast majority of Mitsubishi's WRC success was under the "Ralliart Europe" banner, (b) the Dakar Pajeros carried "Ralliart" branding, and (c) MMSP didn't exist until 2002 when most of the company's success was in the past, I don't think it's most sensible to have its motorsport history here. I'd prefer to migrate the content to Ralliart and restore this to being a redirect. --DeLarge (talk) 09:34, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

The reason I split it is because I feel that Ralliart article should be about the company, Ralliart Inc., which recently closed its doors, and also the Ralliart brand. Ralliart Europe was the name given to a separate operation, run by Andrew Cowan Motorsports in Rugby, England, which was responsible for the WRC programme. Ralliart was only really used there as a brand (and with the Dakar, which was run by a French team called SBM). Ralliart Inc, unlike the article previously suggested, was not responsible for the WRC and Dakar programmes. Or at least that is how it appears to me, having done a lot of research on the topic in recent days. It seemed wrong to introduce the Ralliart article talking about Ralliart Inc, and then go off talking about other companies responsible for the various motorsport programmes. I wanted to differentiate between Rallart Inc and Ralliart Europe. It's a tricky one - it took me a long time to get my head around the other day. Maybe discussing it first would have been a good idea. - mspete93 11:04, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Hello again,

I think you're judging the Ralliart article on the opening line; at the moment it's mostly about Ralliart inc because that's how the article has evolved, but you're free to expand it as much as you like.

Ralliart itself was the recognized MMC motorsport brand name in the 1990s; as a quick example, here is the entry list from the 1995 RAC Rally (I'm using this as an example merely because I used to spectate every year). As you can see, the team is listed as "Mitsubishi Ralliart"; ACMS were merely sub-contracted by Mitsubishi to run the operation. And MMSP was just the successor to ACMS (and SBM), except doing the work as an MMC subsidiary rather than a third-party sub-contractor. Because of the greater familiarity of the name, a reader will most likely have gone looking for "Ralliart", so it seems counter-intuitive to me to redirect them to MMSP, just as it would be counter-intuitive to put the article at Andrew Cowan Motorsports.

A good parallel might be to look at the Ford World Rally Team page. Even though that's just a brand name the same as Ralliart, the history of Ford in the WRC since 1997 is there, while only a little information is at M-Sport, Malcolm Wilson's company which is sub-contracted to build the cars and run the operation (and which is to Ford what ACMS was to Mitsubishi). It also looks like the Subaru World Rally Team article is the same (i.e. they're the brand, Prodrive is the sub-contractor).

The Ralliart page can do the same job, of serving as an overarching article into which all the company's modern racing history can be contained (especially if you're wanting to cover the company's motorsport heritage in a single article as with this edit. That would then give a more cohesive flow, using Ralliart as the "spine" of the story regardless of who the sub-contractor/subsidiary is. As an example, you could break it down into something like...

   * 1 Background
   * 2 Motorsport
         2.1 History
               2.1.1 Circuit racing in the 1960s
               2.1.2 Open-wheeled racing
               2.1.3 Sahara Rally success
         2.2 Dakar Rally
               2.2.1 Pajero [SBM]
               2.2.2 Racing Lancer [MMSP]
         2.3 WRC
               2.3.1 Group B
               2.3.2 Group A [Ralliart Europe]
               2.3.3 World Rally Cars [MMSP]
         2.4 MML Sports Ltd and JMB Stradale Off Road
   * 3 Ralliart inc
         3.1 Ralliart vehicles [Lancer, Colt, etc]

Hope this helps clarify my own perspective. Regards, --DeLarge (talk) 10:24, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't really mind where the info is too much, and I did contemplate putting it on the Ralliart page myself, but I couldn't work out a way of doing it myself. I created this page as a dedicated article for Mitsubishi's WRC programme, but I would be happy for it to be merged into the Ralliart article if that's what others would like. Personally I would like the Ralliart article to be about the company and the brand, as an attempt to distinguish between Ralliart Inc, the subisdiary of Mitsubishi, and Ralliart Europe, which I believe was independent. However, if others like yourself have a different view then that is fine by me, so long as the opening paragraph does a better job of explaining the situation than it currently does. Feel free to merge it in if you wish. As long as we have a home for the WRC info then I am happy. - mspete93 15:46, 7 June 2010 (UTC)