Driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IV–VI: A First-Person Review

The Evo IV is a 2.0-liter turbocharged AWD sedan that pretends to be a normal four-door and then reminds you, every time you turn the key, that it is absolutely not. The steering rack is hydraulic and heavy at parking-lot speeds. The clutch is a unit that punishes sloppy left-foot work. The Recaro in the Tommi Makinen Edition is the only one I have ever sat in that genuinely holds me in place on a back-road apex. I lived with a 1999 Evo VI TME for about four months, mostly in winter, mostly in Quebec, mostly with a roof box on top for ski weekends. It is the best road car I have ever driven, and it is also, in ways the magazines never quite spell out, a chore to own. Both of those things are true at the same time. That is the whole review.

What the Evo IV-VI actually is

The Evolution IV, V, and VI (CN9A, CP9A, CP9A) were Mitsubishi’s homologation specials for WRC. Tommi Makinen won four consecutive drivers’ titles between 1996 and 1999 in the WRC version, and the road cars carry the visual vocabulary of that era - the round fog lights in the front bumper, the red-and-white TME livery on the VI, the stance that looks like a sedan that just remembered it was built for gravel. Under the hood is the 4G63T, a 2.0-liter turbocharged four with a cast-iron block, forged internals on the later cars, and an inviolable reputation for surviving more boost than the factory ever gave it. The V and VI got a larger intercooler, a better-breathing turbo, and revised ECU tuning. The VI TME added a titanium turbine, a closer-ratio gearbox, a front limited-slip differential, a Torsen rear LSD, and a set of Enkei wheels that the resale market now treats as unobtainium.

The driveline is symmetrical AWD with an active center differential and a viscous-coupling rear unit. The earlier IV and V used a mechanical AYC; the VI TME got a Super AYC with yaw control. None of this matters until you drive the car on a slippery surface at speed, and then it is the single most confidence-inspiring system I have ever used in a road car. I have driven a GTR V-Spec II on the same back road and the Evo’s AYC is the more natural-feeling system. The GTR is faster everywhere. The Evo is more fun everywhere I have driven it.

What it is like to drive

Start the engine. The 4G63T is loud for a four-cylinder, mostly because the aftermarket downpipe on the car I drove had no catalytic converter. The factory exhaust note is more muffled but still uncivilized; you hear turbo, intake, and wastegate chatter at any RPM above 2,500. Inside the cabin the steering is hydraulic, not electric, and it weighs up nicely as the front tires load. The gear lever is the Getrag V160 six-speed, with a long throw and a positive gate. The clutch is the car’s most physically demanding control: it is a heavy, single-disc unit with a friction zone that requires deliberate engagement. If you are used to a hydraulic Mazda or Honda clutch, the Evo clutch will frustrate you for the first week. By the second week you will wonder how you ever lived without the tactile feedback.

The ride is the second-most-discussed thing about the car, and it deserves discussion. The IV and V ride firmly but not brutally on the standard Bilstein dampers. The VI TME is meaningfully stiffer, with revised spring rates and a shorter tire sidewall. On a smooth back road the TME is communicative and direct. On a broken urban surface, with the 17-inch wheels and the 215-section tires, it is punishing. The car’s wheelbase is short. The suspension geometry is tuned for tarmac-stage performance. You feel every seam, every pothole, every expansion joint. The magazine writers who called the ride “compliant” were driving on a closed course.

The power comes on hard above 3,500 RPM. Below that, the turbo is a small unit and the response is a beat behind the pedal. Above 3,500 the boost arrives in a long, sustained pull that runs cleanly to redline. The official figure is 276 horsepower, which is a polite fiction; the car I drove put down 305 at the wheels on a Mustang dyno, and the aftermarket community generally agrees that 290-320 at the wheels is the factory envelope. The aftermarket ceiling is a separate question - these engines are built to take 500 wheel on stock internals, and the serious builds run 700-plus on a built short block.

What makes the Evo a great car is not the power. It is the integration. The steering, the brakes, the chassis, the AWD system, and the powertrain are all working together in a way that few cars achieve. There is no dominant single attribute; there is a coherent whole. You can brake later than you think. You can turn in earlier than you think. The AYC will rotate the car through a corner in a way that feels almost like a rear-wheel-drive car, except the front tires are also pulling you through. It is the textbook definition of a chassis that forgives the driver.

The Canadian import story

The 1996-2001 Evos are 25 years old as of 2021-2026, which means US-import-eligible on a rolling basis. To Canada, they are 15-year-rule eligible, and have been since 2011 for the IV. The actual process is straightforward. RIV registration, federal inspection, provincial safety. A clean example from Japan will pass both inspections without modification. The catch is that a clean example from Japan is increasingly rare. The cheap Evos are modified. The unmodified Evos are not cheap. The four-month saga of finding the car I drove is its own story: bidding wars on Yahoo Auctions Japan, a broker in Yokohama who was clearly tired of North American buyers, and a six-week wait at the Port of Vancouver while Transport Canada worked through a paperwork backlog.

Pricing in CAD as of mid-2026: a clean, unmodified, lower-mileage Evo IV or V is trading in the $35,000-$55,000 CAD range. A clean VI TME in the right color is now $80,000-$120,000 CAD, with a small handful of concours-grade examples above that. A modified Evo can be bought for less, but you are buying someone else’s project. The cheap Evos are also the ones that have been tuned beyond the factory envelope, frequently without the supporting fuel or engine-management work that a serious tune requires. The 4G63T is famously tolerant of abuse, but it is not immortal.

Parts availability in North America is decent but not great. The 4G63T has a deep aftermarket, much of it routed through US distributors. OEM-Japan-only parts (the TME-specific Recaros, the titanium turbine, the close-ratio gear set) are genuinely hard to source outside of Japanese specialist shops. The Evo community in Canada is small, vocal, and well-networked. There is a forum, a couple of active shops in Ontario and Quebec, and a few specialists in British Columbia. You are not the first person to try to keep an Evo running in a Canadian winter. You will not be the last.

Climate realities. The Evo is a winter car. The AWD with the viscous center diff is essentially a passive system - it sends power to the wheels that have grip, with no electronic intervention, no nannies to defeat. Studded winter tires on the factory Enkei wheels are a transformation. I drove the car I tested in a February snowstorm on the 401 east of Montreal and arrived at my destination more relaxed than I would have been in a Subaru. The car is unkillable in the snow. The body, on the other hand, is not unkillable. The Evo sits low, the plastic cladding is a joke, and the underside collects the kind of road salt that the Japanese engineers never imagined. Every underbody inspection is going to surface new rust. If you cannot do your own undercoating, factor that into the ownership cost.

If a clean, unmodified Evo IV or V is what you are after, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution inventory on JDMBUYSELL tracks every example currently for sale from verified dealers. For background on what to look for before you commit, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution buying guide walks the chassis codes and the rust/service gotchas. The Evo sits in the same AWD-rally-homologation family as the Impreza WRX STI and the rest of the top-10 AWD JDM cars, and it is one of the best JDM cars to import to the USA on a 25-year rolling basis.

Evo IV-VI road review - back road impressions

What the car is bad at

The interior is the obvious one. The Recaros are excellent. Everything else is 1990s Mitsubishi, which is to say hard plastics, dated switchgear, and a stereo that sounds like a telephone. The HVAC controls are poorly labeled. The window switches are placed where the driver’s knee goes. The trunk is small for a sedan. The rear seat is essentially decorative. The ride, as discussed, is not livable for a daily commute in a city with bad roads. The fuel economy is mid-teens in the city, low twenties on the highway, and worse if you drive it the way it wants to be driven. Insurance is going to be expensive. The clutch is going to wear out. The transfer case fluid is going to leak. The 4G63T is going to need a timing belt every 60,000 miles.

The Evo is not a good daily driver. It is a good car to own and a bad car to commute. The buyers who are happy with theirs are the ones who own a second car for the daily, and use the Evo for what it is best at: a back road, a winter storm, a track day, a weekend morning with no agenda. The buyers who are unhappy are the ones who tried to make it their only car.

Bottom line

The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IV, V, and VI are rally cars for the road. They are the last of the homologation specials built at a time when the WRC mattered enough to justify the production volumes. The 4G63T is one of the great engines of the era. The chassis is the best-balanced AWD platform Mitsubishi ever built. The TME is the high-water mark of the formula, with the Recaros, the titanium turbine, and the close-ratio gearbox that turns a fast car into a precise one. Buy one if you have a second car, a garage, a winter set of wheels, and a tolerance for a punishing ride. Skip one if you are looking for a daily driver, if you cannot turn a wrench, or if you are not prepared to pay the maintenance tax on a 25-year-old rally homologation. The Evo is not for everyone. It is, however, the car I think about most often.