Honda Is Getting In On The Body-On-Frame Truck Game With Mitsubishi's Help

The Honda Ridgeline is a great pickup — perhaps the best truck on the market for buyers who are honest with themselves about what they do with their trucks — but it does lack some of the rough-and-tumble attitude certain buyers in certain markets could be looking for. That could explain why Honda has officially turned to Mitsubishi for help in that area. The automaker will sell its first body-on-frame pickup truck in 2028, a rebadged version of Mitsubishi's Triton, in an effort to fend off rivals from China.

We first told you this was a possibility earlier this month, but the two Japanese automakers made the deal official this week, with Honda saying it would sell its version of Mitsubishi's one-ton, ladder-frame pickup primarily in Southeast Asia, according to Automotive News. Honda says this new truck will have a design distinct enough to differentiate it from the Triton.

It marks the first fruit born of a 2024 deal inked between Honda and Mitsubishi. Nissan, a partial owner of Mitsubishi, also has some interest in the deal, the extent of which hasn't been announced yet. It's sort of the latest chapter of the Honda-Nissan tie-up that never was. Back in 2024, the two companies were going to merge and it all fell apart at the last moment. Now, "The three companies will continue to deepen their strategic partnership," according to AutoNews. On Mitsubishi's side, it adds much-needed volume for the platform that is set to underpin the relaunched and redesigned Pajero/Montero SUV that is slated to arrive in the coming months.

There is certainly the excess capacity to pull off cranking out a ton of Honda Tritons. Mitsubishi's Laem Chabang, Thailand plant, where the truck is produced, has the capacity to build 420,000 vehicles per year, but in 2025, just 170,000 were made there, Automotive News reports. Clearly, there's room to grow. The new Pajero should help fill some of that excess as well.

It's still very early days for the project, so a lot is up in the air. A spokesperson for Honda apparently declined to disclose the exact target markets for this yet-to-be-named pickup or whether it'll make its way to North America. There's also no word on how many it plans to sell yearly.

At the end of the day, though, this truck will be all about making up for miserable sales in China and because of Chinese competition in other parts of the world, and body-on-frame offerings could be just the ticket. It has looked to Nissan as a way to get that done — possibly calling on the ladder-frame platform that is set to underpin the revived Xterra in 2028.

Southeast Asia, a market that demands beefier, more utilitarian vehicles, could be just the place for Honda to shine with rebadged Nissans and Mitsubishis. After all, Honda does have a bit of a history doing this sort of thing. Back in the late 1980s, it took the Land Rover Discovery Series I — a body-on-frame SUV — and turned it into the Honda Crossroad in Japan, and did the same thing with the Isuzu Trooper and Rodeo in the 1990s.