Ralliart Europe was established in 1983 as Andrew Cowan Motorsports (ACMS) Ltd by Andrew Cowan, a Mitsubishi driver who had scored the company's first international victory at the 1972 Southern Cross Rally. Ralliart Australia followed in 1988, founded by Doug Stewart, who had been Cowan's team mate in 1975 and 1976 and had 22 years of experience with Mitsubishi's competition programme. The two operations served as Mitsubishi's primary operational bases for international motorsport for two decades.
In November 2002 Mitsubishi formed Mitsubishi Motors Motor Sports (MMSP) GmbH in Trebur, Germany, and in 2003 consolidated the previously independent regional licensees under this structure, acquiring ACMS Ltd from Cowan while Mitsubishi Motors Australia took over Stewart's Australian business.
Ralliart Europe entered the WRC full-time in 1989 with the Mitsubishi Galant VR-4. The car won in Finland with Mikael Ericsson and in Great Britain with Pentti Airikkala, and Mitsubishi finished fourth in the manufacturers' standings that year and third in 1990. Kenneth Eriksson took the next victory in Sweden in 1991.
The team introduced the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution for the 1993 season, and successive versions of the car — the Evolution II, III, IV, V, and VI — formed the backbone of Mitsubishi's WRC effort throughout the decade. Tommi Mäkinen became the programme's centrepiece, winning the drivers' championship four consecutive times from 1996 to 1999. In 1996 he won five of nine rounds; in 1997 four of fourteen; in 1998 he clinched a third straight title while Mitsubishi also took the manufacturers' championship, their first, aided by two victories from Richard Burns; and in 1999 he secured a then-record fourth consecutive title with the Lancer Evolution VI.
The arrival of the World Rally Car regulations, which rivals Subaru and Ford adopted from 1997, gradually eroded Mitsubishi's competitiveness as the company persisted with Group A machinery. Mitsubishi introduced their own Lancer WRC specification in 2001 but struggled to match the pace of the field with the new car. Mäkinen departed for Subaru after 2001, and Mitsubishi withdrew from full factory participation after 2002, returning in 2005 with the Lancer WRC05 before suspending WRC involvement entirely at the end of that season. MMSP Ltd ran reduced programmes in 2006 and 2007, then ended WRC operations.
Ralliart's Dakar programme operated through the Pont-de-Vaux-based SBM operation, which MMSP purchased in 2003. The Mitsubishi Pajero proved consistently dominant in cross-country rallying, and the team won the Dakar Rally every year from 2004 to 2007. After the 2008 running was cancelled, Mitsubishi developed the Mitsubishi Racing Lancer for 2009, but the new car did not win and Mitsubishi withdrew from cross-country competition that year. Overall the company accumulated twelve Dakar victories from 1982 onwards, a record in the event. In late 2009, Frenchman Nicolas Misslin acquired MMSP SAS and renamed it JMB Stradale Off Road.
Ralliart scaled down its business activities in April 2010 following a restructuring of Mitsubishi Motors, though the brand continued to be used on performance road car variants and through regional licensees. Ralliart Italy, for example, continued to prepare Mitsubishi rally cars for competitors in the Production World Rally Championship, and in 2012 Benito Guerra Jr won three rounds and the PWRC world championship in a car prepared under the Ralliart banner. On 13 May 2021, Mitsubishi executives announced the revival of the Ralliart brand as part of a renewed performance strategy.
Ralliart's WRC record — four consecutive drivers' titles from 1996 to 1999 and the 1998 manufacturers' championship — stands as one of the most concentrated runs of dominance in the championship's history. The Lancer Evolution series that underpinned that success became one of the defining performance cars of its era, and the Evo versus Impreza rivalry it generated with Subaru shaped a generation of motorsport and road car culture. The twelve Dakar wins added a separate chapter of endurance and off-road achievement to what Ralliart represented across its most active years.