The company expects to break ground on the expansion in April and complete construction in fall of 2004. A source at Mitsubishi tells GlobeSt.com the building contractor will be New York City-based Kajima Associates, a unit of Tokyo-based Kajima Corp. subsidiary Kajima USA.

The project follows a recent 170,000-sf addition to the facility and potentially precedes yet another expansion. Mitsubishi Motors says it is studying further options for increasing capacity that could include utilizing available production capacity at one of alliance partner DaimlerChrysler North American plants, expanding the Illinois facility even further or potentially building a new plant. A decision is expected by this summer.

"Our goal is to produce more vehicles in the markets where they are sold," said Steven Torok, executive vice president of international car operations at Mitsubishi, which has achieved an 81% increase in U.S. sales over the past four years and recently expanded into Canada and Mexico.