AFP, Tokyo :
Mitsubishi Motors shares nosedived for a third session Friday morning, tumbling as much as 16 percent after the Japanese automaker’s shock admission that it cheated on fuel-efficiency tests.
Panic-selling on Wednesday and Thursday-when the government raided one of its research centres-had already sent the stock tumbling by a third, wiping about $2.5 billion off its market value.
At the break Friday, the firm was down 13.20 percent at 506 yen ($4.60), having crashed 16 percent at one point.
The rout marks Mitsubishi’s worst three-day decline since its 1988 listing, Bloomberg News reported.
The scandal came as German auto giant Volkswagen struggles to restore its badly dented reputation after revelations of emissions rigging.
On Wednesday, Mitsubishi admitted that unnamed employees rigged tests to make some of its cars seem more fuel-efficient than they were in reality.
The company said it would halt production and sales of the affected models-mini-cars sold in Japan including some made for rival Nissan-and warned that the number of cars involved in the scandal would likely rise, as it looks to vehicles sold overseas.
Mini-cars, or kei-cars, are small vehicles with 660cc gasoline engines that are hugely popular in the Japanese market, although they have found little success abroad.
“Certainly it is a blow,” Christopher Richter, a Tokyo-based auto analyst at brokerage CLSA, told AFP.
“The vast majority of (Mitsubishi’s) business in Japan has become selling mini-vehicles to Nissan because the market share of their own branded products after the scandal in the 2000s withered down to practically nothing.”
More than a decade ago, cash-strapped Mitsubishi teetered on the edge of bankruptcy after slumping sales caused by a series of defect cover-up scandals.
Mitsubishi Motors shares nosedived for a third session Friday morning, tumbling as much as 16 percent after the Japanese automaker’s shock admission that it cheated on fuel-efficiency tests.
Panic-selling on Wednesday and Thursday-when the government raided one of its research centres-had already sent the stock tumbling by a third, wiping about $2.5 billion off its market value.
At the break Friday, the firm was down 13.20 percent at 506 yen ($4.60), having crashed 16 percent at one point.
The rout marks Mitsubishi’s worst three-day decline since its 1988 listing, Bloomberg News reported.
The scandal came as German auto giant Volkswagen struggles to restore its badly dented reputation after revelations of emissions rigging.
On Wednesday, Mitsubishi admitted that unnamed employees rigged tests to make some of its cars seem more fuel-efficient than they were in reality.
The company said it would halt production and sales of the affected models-mini-cars sold in Japan including some made for rival Nissan-and warned that the number of cars involved in the scandal would likely rise, as it looks to vehicles sold overseas.
Mini-cars, or kei-cars, are small vehicles with 660cc gasoline engines that are hugely popular in the Japanese market, although they have found little success abroad.
“Certainly it is a blow,” Christopher Richter, a Tokyo-based auto analyst at brokerage CLSA, told AFP.
“The vast majority of (Mitsubishi’s) business in Japan has become selling mini-vehicles to Nissan because the market share of their own branded products after the scandal in the 2000s withered down to practically nothing.”
More than a decade ago, cash-strapped Mitsubishi teetered on the edge of bankruptcy after slumping sales caused by a series of defect cover-up scandals.
