Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X

They don’t make them like they used to

THIS WAS THE FIRST CAR ON THE evo India fleet. Eight years ago, on the day we signed up to kick start the evo India journey we called up Naren Kumar and bought the Evo X — the first to be delivered in India — off the five-time national rally champion. Thus began our journey with the Evo X laying down our performance car benchmarks and lending credence — and credibility! — to The Thrill of Driving strap line.

Now it wasn’t quick off the line. This was Mitsubishi’s first stab at a twin-clutch automatic and it had no launch control. Where manual Evos of the past would use the four-wheel-drive grip to rocket like maniacs off the line, the Evo X accelerated like an uncle smoking his pipe. But once the pipe was lit, the colossal mid-range torque would fry your brain. It got smoked in standing starts but would return the favour on rolling starts.

And god, it handled. It rewrote a lot of our benchmarks. On dry roads it gripped like a mad man. On a greasy or slippery road you’d get power oversteer. The Evo X taught you, showed you and pushed you to harness torque vectoring. Get on the gas, feel the rear step out, stay brave and keep your foot planted, and let the Active Yaw

Control do its (legendary) thing, powering out of corners with just a dab of opposite lock and incredible grip and bite. In the wet the Evo X was mental. The steering was so sensitive and communicative it was almost like you were holding the tie-rod ends in your hands. Few cars could carry more speed in the wet. You could drift it, hold it, make it dance. Here was a 4WD car that was playful. It was so good that when the CLA 45 arrived and we pitted it against our then three-year-old Evo X, we found it to be nowhere close. Unlike the AWD fast cars that were primarily FWD sending power to the rear on sensing slip, the Evo X was engineered to be a proper 4WD car with the Active Centre Differential. Yank the handbrake and the ACD disengages to pull monster slides. This was proper motorsport engineering baked into a road car so it could be stripped and raced / rallied.

That the all-aluminium 4B11T wasn’t as robustly tuneable as its bullet-proof cast-iron 4G63T predecessor didn’t really matter because Mitsubishi, in India, could never harness its potential. The Evo X was a sea change for Mitsubishi, their stab at making a luxury (fast) car, and the Indiaspec was absolutely loaded to the gills – leather Recaros, Rockford Fosgate sound, BBS wheels, Brembo brakes, Bilstein dampers, Eibach springs – so that its landed cost would qualify for homologation exemption. Evos used to be affordable, fast cars but at a whisker under `50 lakh, the Evo X was a far cry from what we expected, or were ready to dish out.

Ultimately just over a dozen were sold in India and it marked the beginning of the end. Except it isn’t the end. Once the Pajero Sport is upgraded to BS6 emission norms it will return, we hear by June of next year, initially as a CBU but with CKD assembly to commence at either the Renault-Nissan Alliance plant or even more likely at Isuzu’s plant with an Isuzu diesel. The Outlander will follow. And then a whole bunch of electric vehicles. Mitsubishi, we hear, has no plans to quit India. But there will never be anything like the Evo X ever again. ⌧

STEERING WAS SO COMMUNICATIVE IT WAS LIKE HOLDING TIE-ROD ENDS IN YOUR HANDS