Key considerations
- Available for £25,000
- 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo, all-wheel drive
- Even the lower-powered ones are right quick
- Incredibly rugged, but they are getting old
- One or two expensive potential fails to watch out for
- Evo 9 is a ‘true’ Evo and arguably the best all-round model
Today we’ll be taking a squint at the legend that is the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX, or the Evo 9 as most non-Latin speakers call it. Yakking enthusiastically about something that started off as a rather dull four-door family saloon might seem like an unrewarding sort of project to those who are not familiar with this car’s back story but, as every paid-up PHer will know, the reality of the Evo is anything but boring.
By the time the 9 arrived on the scene in 2005 the Lancer Evolution was firmly established as the ultimate supercar-slayer. Its combination of forced-induction power, crampon traction, magnetic grip and rally-bred ruggedness was a winning formula both in competition and on the road. Before we can talk about the Evolution 9 in any more detail, however, it would be nuts not to do a recap on the eight cars that led up to it. It’s the evolution that matters, after all, so let’s start with that.
The story began in 1992 with a family-friendly Lancer saloon that someone at Mitsubishi decided to tool up with the 244hp/228lb ft 4G63T 2.0-litre turbo four and AWD drivetrain from the Galant VR-4, a very credible world rally car developed over two decades on the world’s rally stages. 244hp was a lot of power in the early 1990s, so that first public-roads Lancer Evolution was quite a statement. Some say that 5,000 gen-one Evos were made, exclusively for the Japanese market. Others put the number at 2,500. Whatever it was, they all sold in the first three days of going on sale.
It didn’t take long for grey importers to notice what Mitsubishi was doing and the Evos soon began to appear on British roads. The ’94-’95 Evo 2 brought a power increase to 252hp, a longer and wider chassis and a bundle of bodywork mods. It was 10kg heavier than the first Evo but crucially it was 30 per cent more rigid than the first car, improving handling and body control.
New aero parts on the ’95-’96 Evo 3 – including most obviously the boot-mounted wing that would go on to become the Evo’s signature visual component – joined forces with a new front end that was designed to improve air flow to the brakes and the engine. By way of its higher compression, new turbo and new exhaust, the 4G63T was now rated at 266hp and the rally car had become a serious player on the world circuit, scoring its first two WRC wins in Sweden and Australia. Tommi ‘Maximum Attack’ Makinen took an Evo 3 to the ’96 WRC title, the first of four overall championship wins for him.
Interest in the Evo road cars was now running at an all-time high. In 1996 a twin-scroll turbocharger took the replatformed Evo 4 to 280hp, a figure arrived at through one of the ‘gentleman’s agreements’ that had become de rigueur in the Japanese car and motorcycle industries as a means of defusing public disquiet at the mad power outputs being generated. The Evo 4’s 2.0 engine was turned through 180 degrees, improving its front-to-rear balance. Added to top-spec cars was Active Yaw Control, a sensored-up active rear diff that supplied the correct amount of torque to the correct side of the car. This time, all 6,000 (or 10,000, depending on who you believe) examples were sold in the first three days.
The gen-five car of 1998 officially had the same power as the 4, as per the gentleman’s agreement, but there was some skepticism about that. Changes to the turbo had certainly brought more torque (275lb ft at 3,000rpm) and it seemed unlikely in the extreme that there wouldn’t have been some sort of corresponding power hike. Track was widened by 10mm and the bodywork gained extra aggression with inflated wheel arches to house 17-inch OZ wheels, replacing the old 16s. Bigger Brembo brakes were added, as were Recaro seats.
Hot on the 5’s heels came the Evo 6 of 1999. Changes were mainly confined to cooling-orientated airflow mods and a larger intercooler, but this time the headlines were created by the launch of a lowered, turbo-tweaked, white alloy Enkei-wheeled Tommi Makinen Edition. Some consider the TM 6 to be the greatest Evo ever, steeled as it was by the fierce WRC battle that was going on with Subaru’s Impreza at that time. It was the first Evo to be officially available in the UK, albeit in tiny numbers through Ralliart rather than Mitsubishi UK.
More aero mods, a new front bumper and the unusual option of an automatic gearbox in some markets picked out the 2001 Evo 7, which was based on a new and heavier Lancer Cedia platform. A new Active Centre Differential worked with the Active Yaw to create an All Wheel Control system with modes for different surfaces and conditions. WRC rule changes had actually done away with the need for homologation, but the road car programme had built up an unstoppable momentum by then so Mitsubishi simply carried on building them.
The 7 was the first Evo to benefit from Ralliart’s ‘FQ’ tuning programme in the UK. Power ex-works was still 280hp but Ralliart steamed in with reworked versions like the 300hp FQ-300, the 320hp close-ratio box RS Sprint and the 340hp Extreme. And for the first time you could finally get an Evo with a 6-speed gearbox.
The Evo 8 of 2003 had significant improvements to its chassis with new Bilstein suspension and Enkei wheels. The Active Yaw Control that had first been seen in the Evo 4 had now become Super Active Yaw Control, which was like the Active one but more Super. In concert with lighter bodywork these mods gave the 8 excellent agility on the track. Mitsubishi was still sticking to its 280hp claim but Ralliart was marching on regardless with a range of powered-up FQ-300, 320 and 340 offerings, along with an MR (Mitsubishi Racing) version with a lightweight aluminium roof, new dampers and BBS wheels. A high water mark for the 2.0 litre 4G63T engine was reached in 2004 with the nutter FQ-400 which produced 408hp, benefiting from many new internals and externals including a bespoke Garrett turbo and manifold, HKS block and rods and forged Omega pistons. All that gave the FQ-400 a 0-62mph time in the mid three-second bracket and a 0-100mph time starting with a 9.
Which brings us to the subject of our guide, the 2005-08 Evo 9. MIVEC variable valve timing made its debut here, revisions were made to the turbo and the piston rings were new. In Japan you still got the 280hp/300lb ft spec engine in cars like the RS GT but in the UK the Evo 9 range continued in FQ-300, 320, 340 and 360 versions. Ralliart’s MR FQ-360 by HKS was also released in limited numbers (fewer than 250) in the last year of production. It had less horsepower than the FQ-400 version of the Evo 8 and the 0-62mph time was slightly down at 3.9sec but it was torquier than the 8 with 363lb ft at a much lower 3,200rpm.
The MR FQ-360 by HKS cost £35k new in 2007. A used example with just under 39,000 miles on the clock was advertised on PH Classifieds earlier this year (2024) at £57k. If you’d like to read more about that, and why wouldn’t you, here’s Cam’s story on it.
The sharper-eyed amongst you might be wondering why we’re doing the Evo 9 here, not the Evo X, the final iteration of the dynasty. Surely that’s the best Evo? It had a new 4B11T engine mated to a six-speed twin-clutch auto in place of the classic 4G63T that had served the Evo so well for all those years, and it was very quick, especially in FQ-440 MR guise. Forty of those came to the UK at over £50k a pop. However the Evo 10 was also a less edgy, more rounded sort of car, maybe too rounded. Many say that the 9 was the last ‘true’ Evo, old enough to be interesting but not so old that you’d be frightened of giving it the old-fashioned beasting that it deserves. For no particular reason our specification takes the FQ-300 as its baseline.
SPECIFICATION | MITSUBISHI LANCER EVO IX FQ-300 (2005-2008)
Engine: 1,987cc four-cyl turbo
Transmission: 6-speed manual, all-wheel drive
Power (hp): 305@6,950rpm
Torque (lb ft): 297@4,400rpm
0-62mph (secs): 4.7
Top speed (mph): 157
Weight (kg): 1,400
MPG (official combined): 20
CO2 (g/km): 334
Wheels (in): 17
Tyres: 235/45
On sale: 2005 - 2008
Price new: from £28,000 to £36,000
Price now: from £25,000 (non-specific Evo 9)
Note for reference: car weight and power data are hard to pin down with absolute certainty. For consistency, we use the same source for all our guides. We hope the data we use is right more often than it’s wrong. Our advice is to treat it as relative rather than definitive.
ENGINE & GEARBOX
The MIVEC variable valve timing tech that arrived with the Evo 9 wasn’t the same as Honda’s VTEC system, which created a two-band power curve with a clear ‘step’ between them. MIVEC was more about smoothing the power across the entire rev range and delivering good low down torque. It worked well too, noticeably boosting the engine’s responsiveness and driveability.
Tuning has played an integral part in the 4G63T engine’s well-earned reputation for strength under duress. Although many have gone higher, there’s a view among specialists and owners that 400 is the optimal maximum for both power, torque and reliability. A huge mechanical knowledge base has been built up over the Evo’s history and there’s very little if anything that isn’t fixable one way or another. Age is bringing some head gasket and cooling issues but generally speaking the standard engine is very reliable.
Valve cover seals can leak a little oil but that’s an easy fix. Propshaft joint seals can go but again the fix is easy and the parts inexpensive (around £100). It’s always good practice to give the engine a bit of a rest before you switch it off after a thrash to allow the oil to help cool down the turbocharger. Nor should you use alcohol-based coolants on aluminium-headed engines like this.
Ask any vendor to leave the car cold before you go round for your startup and test drive. You’ll find the change from first to second will be quite baulky but that’s normal. Once it’s warmed up you don’t want to be hearing any crunching or whining. Cars with the five-speed manual box are a good choice if you’re planning on hoisting the power to an unlikely number as the six-speeders can develop issues with fourth gear on tuned, hard-driven cars. Some prefer the longevity and durability advantage of a mechanical limited slip diff rather than the 9’s electronic one. You lose the Active Yaw Control, and as a result of that maybe a fraction of a second over a test course, but some might find that they prefer the handling feel of a non-AYC car. You’ll also lose a potential issue which we’ll get into later.
Running costs with this type of car are always going to be on the high side. You’ll be using supreme grade petrol (97 octane at least) as Evos were built to run on 100 octane in Japan. The Evo 9’s small 12-gallon tank and 20mpg average fuel consumption means it’s not the ideal car for long journeys.
The 9 is punished on vehicle excise duty relative to other Evos and servicing won’t be cheap either. Evos from the 4 onwards are supposed to be given a minor service every 4,500 miles or six months and major ones are every 9,000 miles or 1 year. The cambelt service should be carried out every 45,000 miles. If you’re giving it large on a regular basis at trackdays and the like you might want to consider shortening some or all of these intervals.
In an amusing reversal of the norm, all Mitsubishi UK dealerships are Ralliart-approved for Evo work, but some owners maintain that you’re better off going to an independent Evo specialist for your servicing as these cars are the only ones they work on. As an example, we randomly picked out EvoTune in Durham. They offer four clear, fixed-price servicing plans for all Evos. Plan 1 (oil, filter, screen wash, chassis and brake checks) is £175. Plan 2 adds an AYC service and costs £255. An AYC service on its own is £100.
Plan 3 includes new diff, gearbox and transfer box oils and handbrake adjustment and costs £440. Plan 4 adds a new set of iridium spark plugs and costs £500. Cambelt and balance shaft belt replacement for all Evos up to and including the 9 is £365. All these prices are plus VAT.
CHASSIS
Anti-roll bar bushes and drop links used to wear pretty quickly on pre-Evo 8 cars but they’re more resilient on the 8s and 9s. Dried-out front strut top mounts will produce a knocking noise on turning though. You can try greasing up the top mounts if they’re still serviceable or pay around £300 for a new set of mounts to be fitted. Rear chassis legs need to be solid because putting them right will cost over £5,000. The condition of those is something you can easily see from underneath the car.
Green lights on a dash are normally good, but if all three of them come up at the same time on the ACD display on the right of the dash (gravel, snow, tarmac) they’re not because that’s telling you that the Active Yaw Control pump is in trouble and not producing enough pressure. The pump lives in a metal box but it’s in a pretty exposed position hanging out in the breeze in the nearside rear corner of the car. They can be moved to a better place, but as they come from the factory it’s no surprise that water or other unwanted stuff gets into them. They leak fluid from the inside out too. A squawking noise from the AYC when the car is making a turn is telling you that wear particles are trapped between the clutch plates. Replacing the AYC fluid in the diff will sometimes get rid of these unwanted bits. One PHer found that a Clarkson-style tap on the pump cover with a rubber mallet produced favourable results. If that doesn’t work you’re looking at £1,500 for a drive-in, drive-out AYC pump rebuild by somebody like Auto Torque in Wescott, Bucks.
Brake discs on the FQ-300 were 320mm front and 300mm rear. They could develop a judder but that wasn’t usually down to disc warping (which used to be a problem with Evo 6s). On the 9 it’s more likely to be hard-packed deposits of brake dust, a problem that can sometimes be cleared by repeated hard stops. The yellow paint on the Bilstein damper units flaked off, as did the lacquer on the Brembo calipers which could also turn brown if you were using the brakes a lot with aggressive pads fitted.
Speedline Turinis (17-inch) are the wheels of choice. Tyres will obviously burn down quickly if you’re using the performance, and you’ll certainly want them to be fresh on a car like the Evo. Michelin PS4s are just under £150 a corner.
BODYWORK
The 9 came as standard with the aluminium roof that you only got on the MR version of the 8. A ridgeline running the length of the roof on both sides was visual confirmation of that. It also had an aluminium bonnet and front wings.
A big issue to watch out for with any older ungalvanised Japanese car that was never meant to leave that country or be driven in the rain is rust, not just underbody (Auto Torque offers a specialist Evo de-rust and underseal) but also around the front suspension strut top mounts and the bonnet slam panel. Paint could bubble on the front wheel arches and the double-skinned rears.
Any Evo with a rear wing is susceptible to corrosion on the underside of the boot lid where the spoiler bolts come through. The lower seam of the lid is another rust attack point. Water can accumulate in the spare wheel well under the boot floor. Boot drain holes need to be kept clear as do the ones on the trailing edges of the doors.
The Evo 9’s wheelarch splash guard wasn’t that great at preventing water getting into the passenger footwell, where it would degrade the fusebox and the electrics. If the wipers or ignition lights stay on when the key is not in its hole the chances are your Evo has got that problem.
Some ‘MR by HKS’ cars weren’t that. They were FQ-360s with HKS badges put on them by unscrupulous types who knew that the letter HKS didn’t appear anywhere on the V5 ownership document. Chrome interior door handles mean it should be an HKS car as no other late-model Evo variant has those.
INTERIOR
MR models were supposed to have better seats than non-MR cars, with red stitching and Alcantara inserts, but some ‘MRs’ you’ll see won’t have them. You can probably come up with your own theory on why that might be.
Recaro seats that were fitted to Evos and quite a few other performance cars could have a problem with the recline adjustment clamp not securing itself correctly. This led to gradual rearwards slippage which meant you had to readjust it every few days. A replacement base frame from Recaro was the fix.
Heater matrices could leak over time and putting that right is an involved job requiring dash removal. A replacement matrix will be getting on for £500. If the car smells when the air con is working the evaporator drain hole is most likely blocked, which means the evaporator can’t dry out as it’s supposed to. You might have to cut a hole in the case to mend that, though if you’re lucky spraying some disinfectant into the bulkhead air inlet might do it.
Radios on Evo 4s onwards with rear window antennae (usually but not exclusively GSRs) can suffer from poor reception. This is normally because the 12v feed to the booster amp has been disconnected. The Lancer Register website gives you a guide to fixing it.
PH VERDICT
Few cars have been as well named as the Mitsubishi Evolution. Sure, the evolution process was rattling along at a crazy pace with new cars popping out every two years and sometimes more quickly than that. There were two re-platformings on the way but through it all the essence of the Evo was never lost over nearly three decades, nine main iterations and heaven knows how many UK and Japanese domestic market variations within those iterations.
Some of the evolutionary steps might look a bit ludicrous to some, with ever-madder body hacks struggling to accommodate the increasing demands of the chassis and drivetrain, but it’s the very madness of those hacks that so brilliantly defined the character of the car and that make it so identifiable today. Most folk know an Evo when they see one. It’s become generic, like a Hoover.
Any Evo of any age still commands massive respect on the road too, the older ones because of their blend of heritage and performance and the newer ones like the 9 because of all of that plus their ability to cover ground as quickly as any 2024 performance car, if you’re committed enough. You won’t feel like you’re driving an outdated car when it comes to performance, agility or build integrity.
It might seem from our guide that there’s quite a bit that can go wrong but that would be an unfair assessment of the Evolutions. They were built to be driven hard, and most of them have been. Components break even in routine use on ‘normal’ cars so expecting something else from an Evo 9, the youngest one of which will be 16 years old, is unrealistic. Having said that, many of the Evo’s common faults – rusty wastegate actuators, faulty yaw control ECUs, tappet noises, helical LSD case bolt failures, dodgy idle speed control valves, fuel cuts on overboost and overflowing expansion tanks, to name but a few – had been ironed out by the time the Evo 7 came out. Most if not all of the endemic weaknesses were gone completely by the time the Evo 8 arrived. That’s the beauty of such a fast-paced evolution.
How much will it cost you to get into the Evo 9 lifestyle? Not counting a 53,000-mile Cat D FQ-360 that we saw at £21,700, £25k was the average baseline price for an Evo 9 at the time of writing (October 2024). A private 78k FQ-340 with 414hp was one of two £25k Evo 9s we saw outside PH. Another private FQ-360 HKS with just under 40,000 miles was on at £30k, the same price as a 75,000-mile dealer FQ-340 that had been tuned to 420hp. There were five Evo 9s for sale on PH Classifieds at the time of going to press. Just before our virtual overlord pressed the virtual print button, one of them that had been up for just under £29k was sold, leaving you this 64,000-mile 280hp RS GT at £35k, this MR FQ-340 with 35,000 miles at £41,950, this 22,000-mile RS at £55k, and this 68,000-mile FQ-340 at £42,500.
If you’re not wedded to the four-door Evo look here’s one of the very rare Evo 9 estates, imported into the UK in 2016. There’s no engine info or pics so we’re assuming it’s a 280hp unit. We are told it’s had extensive upgrades but again there are no details. The body has been ceramic coated and its condition certainly belies the 88,000 miles mentioned on the ad. It could just as easily be 88,000km or even less. Whatever, if you’ve got the thick end of thirty grand and want something different it’s got to be worth a phone call to find out a bit more about it.
If you’re holding plenty of folding and don’t mind going back in time you could buy a 42,000-mile Tommi Makinen Evo 6 that was up for sale in October ’24 at nearly £90k. That car started at £100k in July and was on the way down. Another Evo 6, this time a non-Makinen car with fewer than 2,000 miles covered, was on at £85k. At the other end of the spectrum we saw one privately-owned 6 with a claimed 440hp tune on sale at £9,975. It had done nearly 160,000 miles, mind, but that’s a measure of their strength.
There are a lot of Evo 6s on the UK used market just now, Makinens as well or regular. Considering how many of them there seem to be, the prices being asked for some of them seem quite optimistic. Especially when you discover that there is no shortage of mid-mileage (50k) Evo 10s around for under £20k. Sure, 10s aren’t as desirable or collectible but they’re still amazing cars and the prices look very tempting. The cheapest 10 we found was a private 94,000-mile FQ-300 with the AYC warning light on at £11,995. If you didn’t want to be bothered getting that fixed you could go straight to a fully historied 10 with 100,000 miles that was on sale at £13k.
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