Defects are triggering a wave of recalls

The company has been plagued by quality problems, which now mean more than 500,000 Mitsubishi Fuso trucks and buses will have to be recalled.

Over 1.3 million vehicles in Japan are eligible for the free inspections.

Fuso said on Wednesday that 2003 had seen strong sales up 24%, but that the coming year was impossible to forecast.

Overall, the group is now seeing sales slide as customers respond to the repeated recalls, with June domestic sales down almost two-thirds on the year before to below 18,000 units.

In the red

Mitsubishi's woes are largely the result of a series of quality scandals.

The latest saw a Pajero sports utility vehicle catch fire and burn to ashes on a mountain road in southern Japan less than a week ago.

Fuso bosses are having to apologise for the firm's behaviour

A week before, a Fuso truck had combusted despite having been repaired in an earlier recall.

Not only have multiple defects caused massive recalls, totalling almost 350,000 passenger cars worldwide, but management stands accused of covering up the flaws.

The only one of Japan's major carmakers to be making a loss, Mitsubishi's troubles are causing pain for parent DaimlerChrysler, which owns 65% of the group.