Earlier this month, Mitsubishi dealerships in Japan opened up their order books to customers who wanted to buy the Lancer Evolution Final Edition.
As you no doubt have already guessed by the name, it will be the last version of the Evo X ever made. This is no Rolling Stones farewell tour cropping up every five years; Mitsubishi is well and truly taking their rally-bred, all-wheel drive turbo-sedan out behind the old woodshed with a shovel and a grim expression. This is it, the end of Evo; no longer will one of the most iconic Japanese performance cars be part of Mitsubishi's company strategy. Instead, get ready for plug-in hybrid crossovers everyone! Wait, where are you going? On the face of it, does anyone really care? After all, Subaru has sharpened the STI up to the point where that car is sort of an amalgam of the two former rivals. The STI and the Evo were once quite different - the former softer, friendlier, and better in the gravel; the latter sharper, quicker to change direction, and a little less liveable day-to-day - but now the STI would impress your average Mitsubishi fan.
Once they were at each others' throats, but now it looks like the Subie won and that's an end to it. But that's a real shame, as it's the Mitsubishi that should have won the day. Even if I'm a big fan of the WRX, I have to admit that the Lancer has a longer, richer history, and was probably the better car in many ways.
Back in the 1970s, when Subaru was still messing around with stuff like the homely little 360 fuel-saver, Mitsubishi was fielding a genuinely exciting little coupe. The Lancer GSR weighed a feathery 900 kilograms, and had a zippy little twin-carb four-banger putting out 169 horsepower. Not bad by current standards, and when you consider that the contemporary Datsun 240Z was (a) heavier and (b) less powerful, that's actually quite impressive.
Mitsubishi fielded a racing-spec version of the car with Scot Andrew Cowan at the wheel, and it did very well. In the Southern Cross Rally, held in the Australian Outback, the GSR racked up five straight victories. That's right, a flamboyant Scottish champion and the word "Outback" long before anyone had heard of Colin McRae or two-tone plastic body cladding.
The Lancer would also be the vehicle of choice for Kenyan rally driver Joginder Singh. Singh, whose family would later have ties to B.C., first famously won the incredibly gruelling Safari Rally in a clapped-out Volvo, and later campaigned two Mitsubishi entries to victory, in 1974 and 1977. Between these early roots and the first proper Lancer Evolution is a whole mish-mash of cars from the 2000EX turbo to a four-wheel drive version of the Starion. However, when it came time for the Lancer to step up to the plate, it came fully realized and ready to knock it out of the park. Meanwhile, in Canada, everyone was trundling around in Colts and cars rebadged as Dodges, and few thought of Mitsubishi as a performance brand. Sure, there was the Dodge Stealth and the Mitsubishi 3000GT, but these twin-turbo machines were dark horses, and very heavy. Compared to emerging rivals like the 300ZX twin-turbo and the Supra, they remain in the shadows even today. Probably the closest thing you could get to a Japanese Evo was something like the Eagle Talon. With available all-wheel drive and Mitsubishi's 2.0-litre turbocharged 4G63T engine, the Talon was very quick out of the box and extremely tuneable. Many of them were turned into blazing fast tuner cars - and many destroyed in the process.
Meanwhile, fans of rally racing or of the Gran Turismo games for Playstation were finding out just why the Lancer Evolution was so popular in Japan. It wasn't just the power and the grip: the Evo was outfitted with increasing amounts of technology, new ways to put down the power and battle the understeer normally inherent in an all-wheel-drive car.
Consider Mitsubishi's Super-All-Wheel-Control with Active Yaw Control. Now, I know the Japanese marques love their convoluted names and alphabet soup acronyms, but this is some pretty slick kit. The S-AWC has the ability to shunt power around to the wheel with the best traction, and the AYC uses accelerometers and other sensors to monitor the angle of attack the car's taking through a corner.
Taken all together, it meant the Evo could unleash all 280 h.p. (at least - later models had their power levels underrated) through the corner, wheels scrabbling and scorching and destroying tires and pavement. It was utterly ferocious, and with a series of ice-blooded Finnish drivers at the wheel, it dominated the World Rally Championships. Tommi Makkinen, now driving for Subaru, was so successful that Mitsubishi made a special edition car wearing a version of his racing livery. In 2003, U.S. customers got the chance to buy an Evo, albeit a slightly watered-down version, but Canadians were left out in the cold until the current generation showed up in 2008. Everybody in North America missed out on the very rare and super-cool wagon version that was available for just 2,500 units in Japan only. However, when the Evo arrived on our shores it wasn't cheap. You could get the car with stuff not offered on the STI - namely, a dual-clutch transmission on top models - but it was expensive, easily matching the 370Z and V-8 Mustangs in price point.
Still, the Evo found its way into many enthusiasts' driveways, and it maintained some much-needed street cred for the Mitsubishi brand. The company's compact cars and crossover even aped the Evo's aggressive grille, using their halo car to maximum effect.
And now it's gone. We're in a golden age of cars for the enthusiast, and with an all-wheel-drive version of the Focus RS coming soon and the Golf R more powerful than ever, perhaps we don't really need the Evo any more. Even if Mitsubishi spent the RD dollars, would they sell enough to justify the outlay? Probably not.
But still, here at the end of the Evolution, it's hard not to be a little sad. It's the end of a fearsome bloodline stretching back more than four decades. The Evo has run its course, and we'll miss it.
