The engine is a bit of a disappointment - 2015 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X Review
1This is the end, not-so-beautiful friend.
From the April 2016 issue of Car and Driver.
The Lancer Evolution Final Edition is a compact sedan that costs nearly $40,000 and has no navigation system or backup camera. The sole 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 loose in the trunk will complete 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 2.0-liter four is rated at 303 horsepower, delivers 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 4.69:1 final-drive ratio. The only way the hydraulically assisted power steering could be more engaging is if the driver held the tie-rod ends in his bare hands. This is a full-immersion automobile; the driver can practically drown in its mechanical frenzy.
Like so many great 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 decided to embrace rallying as a path to corporate clarity. And in 1987 it built the four-wheel-drive, turbocharged Galant VR-4 sedan to go hunting. The iron-block 4G63 2.0-liter engine and its accompanying four-wheel-drive system were freakishly brilliant, but the Galant was too large to dominate World Rally Championship. So, in 1992, Mitsubishi stuffed the Galant VR-4’s driveline into the smaller, agonizingly ordinary Lancer sedan to create the first Evo—the Evolution I.
HIGHS: Quick reflexes, slamming power, glorious heritage.
Though it was sold only in Japan, the first Evo was too good for its legend to stay on the archipelago. With 247 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 answer 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 performance universe. It was a profane digit aimed at Camaros, Mustangs, Chevelles, and Chargers.
As American car freaks 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 256 horsepower, climbing to 266 in 1995 with the Evo III. Then there was this Finnish guy 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, 1996 through 1999. Mäkinen could turn an Evo in mid-flight, carom off berms like pool-table balls, and gain 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 exciting 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 finally 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 2 Fast 2 Furious and finally certified the Evo VIII for sale in America.
With its 271-hp 4G63T, the Evo VIII was raw, brutal, and punishing in the best possible way. “The Evo is not without its shortcomings—it’s just that none of them diminishes the ability to have fun in the car,” wrote junior writing drone Daniel Pund in C/D’s first comparo between 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 fast.
The Final Edition plays like a best-of compilation. Based on the current Evolution X GSR, the hood, front fenders, and roof are aluminum, and the 2.0-liter 4B11 turbocharged four has been pumped up 12 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.