Mitsubishi Evo X Final Edition: the Tear Jerking Saddest Farewell of the 21st Century

But for a particular generation, never did one of these hurt quite so much as the day we bid farewell to the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. Or, as most people call it these days, just the Evo X. The tenth-generation Lancer Evolution X is one of the all-time great performance cars of the 21st century.

It may have been built by a management team that hadn't bothered innovating in the North American market in decades, and maybe its build quality wasn't all that great as a result. But fans of the Evo Xs will tell you they don't give a rat's behind about the build quality. They care that it's one of the most fun and easiest cars to drive, possibly of all time.

This is especially the case for the Evo X Final Edition, the special celebratory model to commemorate the end of the line for the car. In the same way that a movie about a family dog is the saddest when they put it down at the end, the Evo 10 was like a sick, suffering animal by the time the Final Edition came around. In short, the Evo X Final Edition is Marley & Me on four wheels, except possibly even sadder to some.

On its official test drive published in Car & Driver magazine back in April 2016, author John Pearly Huffman described the plastic trim pieces inside the Final Edition's interior were "As if they were blow-molded by an asthmatic," Admittedly, this had been a worrying trend with Mitsubishi automobiles in North America by the mid-2010s. Mitsubishi struggled mightily all throughout the mid-2000s to the late 2010s.


Consistently driven to the margins of the United States Domestic Market by being crushed under the boots of Honda, Nissan, Ford, GM, and especially, Toyota. But the Lancer Evolution was one of the lone bright spots. For instance, Toyota couldn't even come close to matching the pantomime under the hood of the Evo X. In the Final Edition, the iconic two-liter turbocharged four-pot derived from rally racing made 303 hp to all four wheels.

This power is run through a five-speed manual transmission to a split front a rear differential running a 4.69:1 final-drive ratio. Mitsubishi passenger cars today all run an anemic electric power steering system, not so with the Evo X. Its hydraulic steering unit is lauded as one of the crispest and most precise steering boxes fitted to a contemporary performance car.

The technology behind the Evo Xs all-wheel-drive system dates all the way back to the Galant VR-4 rally cars of the late 1980s. By the mid-2010s, this system was so dialed in and precise that it'd be hard to grab a better racing line in tight corners with 600 horsepower mid-engined supercars. Couple this with a MIVEC variable valve timing system that makes the engine sing with joy as it revs, and you have a recipe for a memorable and special four-seater sports sedan.

Zero to 60 miles per hour (0-97 kph) was wallopped in 4.4 seconds with the Final Edition Evo 10. 18-inch Yokohama Advan performance tires from the factory ensured the AWD system always had enough grip no matter the conditions. Of course, the Evo 10 could smoke the quarter-mile on tarmac, grass, gravel, mud, show, and just about any other terrain other than the surface of the moon.


1600 of this final edition EVO Xs were shipped from Japan to North America. Available options came in three packages. The first is a sight and sound package with a 710-watt Rockford Fosgate nine-speaker sound system with high-intensity daytime running lights up front and a fast key remote start system.

The second premium package adds a power glass sunroof and heated front seats. The touring package consolidates the best of the previous two packages to get a best of both worlds happy medium. Each edition was ordered with at least one component from the options list and oftentimes many others besides.

The final Lancer Evo X ever built headed to an eBay auction in September 2016. The car shipped from Japan sported a unique plaque bearing the inscription "US1600." The car was sold on September 15th, 2016, for a sum of $76,400. A hefty sum for a Mitsubishi product, but you won't hear us question it. If anything, that's a pretty sweet deal.

In contrast, the first Evo X Final Edition sold out of Cypress, California, for $46,200. To this, we can only say the winner of that auction got the deal of the century. Expect that same car to be worth ten times that price in the not-so-distant future.

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