This 'Brand New' 11-Year-Old Mitsubishi Evo IX Is Somehow Attracting Six-Figure Bids

It's so new that it's never actually been sold at all and the seats are still covered with the factory-applied covers, but we still can't understand how this 2006 Evo IX MR can be worth over $100,000

Matt Kimberley

21 Jul 2017

We don’t know quite how to break this to you, good CTzens, but the six-figure Mitsubishi Evo has happened.

We’ve spotted a 2006 Evo IX on eBay in the US that’s as new as new gets. In fact, it’s so new that it has never actually been sold. The seller, a Mitsubishi dealer in California, apparently ordered a bunch of Evo models over time and has only been selling them when the prices have climbed higher than list.

There’s higher than list, and then there’s ‘over $100,000’. We’re stunned. How can it be worth that? Mileage is one clue: it has covered just nine miles since the days when it would have cost a customer $37,094 courtesy of some optional extras. It’s a Graphite Grey MR model, so it has Bilstein monotube dampers, a six-speed manual gearbox, split seven-spoke forged BBS wheels, extra brake cooling ducts and a few other trinkets, but it’s not even a model that you’d picture as one of the most sought-after.

A dealer in Brooklyn, for comparison, is selling chassis #0001 of the 1600-car Lancer Evolution Final Edition run for $87,888 – also completely brand new. With bidding on this 2006 car already nudging $108,000 at the time of writing, we can only assume that the world has gone completely bonkers. And for another thing, when you’re selling a high-value car, why don’t you take better pictures?!

With 286bhp on tap and insanely effective all-wheel drive it will hit 62mph from a standstill in 4.4 seconds. Our favourite thing about this car is the surface/driving mode indication inside the large, central rev-counter in the instrument cluster. You can select Tarmac, Gravel and Snow modes, and you know it really is engineered to monster every one of those surfaces.

Bidding is set to end on Tuesday, and you can bet we’ll bring you the final price. It’s already way beyond that of a brand new Dodge Challenge SRT Demon, for a slice of context. It’s such a shame this car has never been enjoyed the way it was meant to be. You can bet that the high-bidders aren’t exactly intending to take it to their nearest rally stage, either. Ah well.