One hundred sixty thousand dollars American—that’s a lot of money for a car. You’d expect to pay that price for something like a Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo, 911 or a decently optioned Mercedes-Benz S Class. You probably wouldn’t expect to pay that for a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, but that’s exactly what happened recently on Bring A Trailer.
Let me get this out of the way first: I’m convinced there’s something sketchy going on at Bring A Trailer. At first I thought it was just me getting old and not understanding that my fellow Millennials are the ones with enough money now to spend absurdly on cars. People have dropped wild amounts on things like Toyota Camrys and Honda CR-Vs in the recent past. But a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution going for over six-figures? That is something else.
A seller posted a bone stock 2007 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX MR for sale and not a damn thing is special about it except incredibly low miles and it’s an Evo IX MR which, granted, is kind of special, but only in the sense that Evos of this generation are generally hard to find nowadays. Mitsubishi likely didn’t bring many of these to the U.S., with online speculation saying just over 8,200 Evo IXs brought to our shores, just over 4,000 were IX MRs. Is that really worth $161,000?
Other than that, it’s stock; a turbocharged 2.0-liter 286 horsepower engine, active center diff, six-speed manual transmission and all the aero goodies that came with the Evo MR like the signature vortex generators on the back window. It was a hell of a car to drive, except this owner never drove it. They purchased it brand new in 2007, drove it just 461 miles and then garaged it for the next 17 years. In the comments, the seller mentions they had another 2003 Evo that they used as a daily driver.
According to the window sticker included with the car, the seller purchased the Evo IX MR for $37,424 in 2007. It sold for nearly five times that. You’re looking at a $161,000 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX. That price is wild for a couple reasons, the first of which is seriously? I know it has low miles and it’s relatively rare, but well over six figures is nuts. This price also makes it the highest priced Lancer Evo ever sold on Bring A Trailer; two Evo IXs (one Special Edition with 2,200 miles and one 809 mile MR) each sold for $90,000 back in 2022 and those were the second highest.
This Evo is even more expensive than any Evo sold on Cars & Bids; the most expensive sold on that site was an 11,700 mile Evo IX RS back in February for $55,500. Whatever is happening on these auction sites is lunacy. It won’t be long until we start seeing $200,000 bugeye Subaru WRX STis and $100,000 Mazdaspeed Miatas.
