Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution

2015 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution Final Edition

• Mar 2016
• By JOHN PEARLEY HUFFMAN
• Numerous Photographers

The Lancer Evolution Final Edition is a compact sedan that costs almost $40,000 and has no navigation system or backup camera. The foot USB port is hidden in the glove compartment as an afterthought. Most of the plastic panels look as if they were blow-molded by an asthmatic, the switchgear actively discourages switching, and leaving a bowling ball liberate in the trunk will accomplish the structure’s imitation of a spray-paint rattle can. There’s a lot to loathe about this, the last Evo that’s ever likely to be. And then there’s so much to love.

The turbocharged Two.0-liter four is rated at three hundred three horsepower, produces colossal mid-range torque, and sounds as if it’s consuming a raccoon. Each of the five forward gears engages with the certainty of a guillotine, and the overdrive fifth gear doesn’t slow the engine down much for freeway driving thanks to the supershort Four.Sixty nine:1 final-drive ratio. The only way the hydraulically assisted power steering could be more engaging is if the driver held the tie-rod completes in his nude palms. This is a full-immersion automobile; the driver can practically drown in its mechanical madness.

Like so many fine cars before it, the Evo is awesome because it’s a race car. Mitsubishi, consistently confused about what it wants to be, at one time determined to embrace rallying as a path to corporate clarity. And in one thousand nine hundred eighty seven it built the four-wheel-drive, turbocharged Galant VR-4 sedan to go hunting. The iron-block 4G63 Two.0-liter engine and its accompanying four-wheel-drive system were freakishly brilliant, but the Galant was too large to predominate World Rally Championship. So, in 1992, Mitsubishi jammed the Galant VR-4’s driveline into the smaller, agonizingly ordinary Lancer sedan to create the very first Evo—the Evolution I.

However it was sold only in Japan, the very first Evo was too good for its legend to stay on the archipelago. With two hundred forty seven horsepower and a massive intercooler crammed into its nose, it went on sale shortly after magazines like Sport Compact Car were hitting newsstands in America. It was the scalded-cat, twerp-monster reaction to the aging, muscle-car orthodoxy of the early 1990s. It was an anti-style four-door box to crave—from afar, unattainable—and people born after Woodward’s heyday could claim it as the center of their spectacle universe. It was a profane digit aimed at Camaros, Mustangs, Chevelles, and Chargers.

As American car perverts made do with the mechanically similar Diamond-Star (Chrysler, Dodge, Eagle, Mitsubishi, and Plymouth) coupes and turning the Honda Civic quick, the Evo legend grew. By the time the Evo II appeared in 1993, the 4G63T was snorting out two hundred fifty six horsepower, climbing to two hundred sixty six in one thousand nine hundred ninety five with the Evo III. Then there was this Finnish man named Tommi.

Mitsubishi’s factory Ralliart team had developed the Evo into a near-perfect rally weapon, with Tommi Mäkinen as the ­trigger. With an insane instinct for car control, Mäkinen used a series of Evo IIIs, IVs, Vs, and VIs to win the WRC drivers’ cham­pionship for four straight years, one thousand nine hundred ninety six through 1999. Mäkinen could turn an Evo in mid-flight, carom off berms like pool-table pouch, and build up speed as his cars ­disintegrated around him. Now the Evo legend was fortified with achievement. Mi­tsu­bishi only won the manufacturers’ cham­pionship in 1998, but the Evo seemed to be charting an titillating course for the company’s future.

As the 21st century arrived, the Evo legend was massive, and dozens were sneaking into America through importers. Even Mitsubishi ultimately got it through its thick commercial skull that Americans had an Evo appetite. So in 2003, Mitsu donated several Evo VIIs for Paul Walker to drive in Two Quick two Furious and eventually certified the Evo VIII for sale in America.

With its 271-hp 4G63T, the Evo VIII was raw, brutal, and penalizing in the best ­possible way. “The Evo is not without its shortcomings—it’s just that none of them diminishes the capability to have joy in the car,” wrote junior writing drone Daniel Pund in C/D’s very first comparo inbetween the Evo and its perennial archenemy, the Subaru Impreza WRX STi.

Through all the microsliced variations of Evo that Mitsu has served since then—RS, MR, GSR, SE, and various FQs—the character of the car has remained intact. It’s still a car built with more snot than a diphtheria epidemic, that generates analog sensations rather than digital simulations, that is stinky-rotten prompt.

The Final Edition plays like a best-of compilation. Based on the current Evolution X GSR, the spandex hood, front fenders, and roof are aluminum, and the Two.0-liter 4B11 turbocharged four has been pumped up twelve horsepower to 303. The only transmission is that quaint five-speed. The front seats aren’t Recaros, which says it all. The suspension features Eibach springs and Bilstein shocks, and those are big Brembo brakes behind each 18-inch Enkei wheel.

In compensation for the mechanical mayhem and coccyx-slapping rail, the Final Edition is the quickest Evo we’ve ever tested, running to sixty mph in Four.Four seconds. Launching takes a commitment to clutch manhandle and faith that 245/40R-18 Yokohama Advan tires stick as tenaciously in a straight line as they do in corners.

This is an exceptionally effortless and satisfying car to go ridiculously quick in. There’s always power available, the steering is instinctive and quick, and the brakes keep working no matter how much manhandle is thrown their way. But it’s utterly anti-social. It’s a superb car that’s effortless to hate.

The Evo X has been around since 2007, but it’s this final one that brings back the charisma of its 4G63T-powered ancestors. Mitsubishi has imported one thousand six hundred of these final Evos, and tho’ they’re two thousand fifteen models, slew stay on dealer lots.

Ultimately, the Evo FE is a throwback to 2003, back to when I was writing for Sport Compact Car and Wi-Fi networks weren’t how we communicated with cars. But Sport Compact Car died in 2009, the generation that grew up worshipping the Evo is buying kid haulers now, and Mi­tsubishi has followed the crossover herd with the Outlander and Outlander Sport.

Some of the Evo’s glamour wore off due to Mitsubishi’s own inattention. But mostly it’s the nature of life: The adolescent obsessions of a generation fade as it inevitably ages into adult responsibilities. And that deepthroats.

Highs and Lows

Highs:

Quick reflexes, stuffing power, glorious heritage.

Slop-bucket build quality, punitive rail, throwback technology.

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