Mitsubishi’s £100k Evo headlines heritage fleet sale

Mitsubishi’s fleet of heritage cars have hit heady heights at auction, with the star lot – a 2001 Lancer Evolution VI Tommi Makinen Edition – selling for over £100,000.

Mitsubishi is halting sales of its models in the UK later this year, which led to Mitsubishi Motors in the UK (MMUK) offloading its prized assets. All 14 of its heritage vehicles and a large selection of private number plates were listed online with no reserve via specialist platform Auto Auction, with interested parties having from April 1 until April 30 to place their bids.

The Evolution VI was undoubtedly a very special example, having been signed by Tommi Makinen himself and covered just over 10,000 miles. It’s also featured in countless magazines and was the very car we took to Wales for a Classics World video last year. Frenzied early activity saw it quickly rise to £78,000, before finally selling for a whopping £100,100 after 71 bids.

Three more Evos were also included in the sale, with a 2008 Evolution IX MR FQ-360 HKS – one of only 200 built – selling for £68,900 and a 2015 Evo X reaching £58,100. The brand’s rally heritage was also showcased by an Evo IX driven to consecutive British Rally Championship victories by Guy Wilkes in 2007 and 2008, which sold for £61,700. A little cheaper at £12,500 was a Galant GTi rally replica built in the late ’80s to commemorate Pentti Airikkala’s Lombard RAC Rally victory in a Galant VR4. Two of the earliest original Mitsubishis registered in the country were also offered.

Both from 1974, the Colt Lancer and a Colt Galant realised impressive figures of £15,000 and £11,600 respectively. The brand’s flagship sports cars of the ’80s and ’90s were also represented by a 1988 Starion Turbo at £21,100 and a 1992 3000GT at £24,500. Also impressive was the performance of the 4x4 models, with another Classics World Video star – a 1987 Mk1 Shogun – selling for £16,000, and a 1979 J27 Jeep produced under licence by Mitsubishi selling for £20,600. The newest vehicle was a 2017 L200 ‘Desert Warrior’ built for the brand by journalist and TV presenter Tom Ford, which sold for £30,100. For the full list of results, visit www.autoauction.co.uk.