EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH

Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution or Evo, as it colloquially became known, first appeared in 1992, with Mitsubishi having to produce significant numbers of road-going versions for World Rally Championship homologation purposes. It sold the entire first batch of 2500 within three days of its launch and, fittingly, kept on evolving the formula: in all, the Evo appeared in ten main guises over a 23-year run until 2015.

As a road car, the early Evolutions were relatively unknown outside Japan and until the Evo VI became available through Mitsubishi’s Ralliart dealers in 2000, all Evos were private or grey imports.

Soon after the car’s UK arrival, Mitsubishi adopted new World Rally rules meaning the link between the roadgoing cars and their rally counterparts wasn’t so important. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop even more powerful variants from coming. They’re not a cheap car to run or maintain – sub 10mpg is possible when driving hard, and as a very specialist car they demand care and attention – but