Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII MR

This entry moves a value 4.1 per cent per 10,000 kilometres, which is the steepest rate in the library, and the model refuses to move any value more than twelve per cent for distance. Past about 144,000 kilometres the two collide and every car gets the same treatment. The cap binds on FOUR of the nine results here. On the September car the rate wants minus 18.8 per cent and pays minus 12, so the model returns $37,840 where the raw term returns $34,900 and the room paid $32,250. The capped figure is a ceiling, not an estimate, and on a high-distance Evo it reads about fifteen per cent optimistic.

$52,000 at 52,269km, $50,000 at 86,800km, $46,250 at 102,631km, $51,000 at 130,658km, $40,250 at 119,936km, $37,000 at 116,707km, $32,500 at 144,676km and $32,150 at 171,583km. Fitted against distance they correlate at minus 0.776 and imply 4.1 per cent per 10,000 kilometres, against the 3.2 this record assumed. The fitted value at the 115,000 kilometres this record expects is $42,759, so the carried $44,000 was about three per cent high and is now $43,000.

And lands within $400 of the full-sample figure at the same distance, which is the closest agreement between two independent fits anywhere in this library. SOURCING: aggregator-surfaced auction results, not confirmed against the auction house, the weakest evidence grade in this library.

Mitsubishi Australia did launch an Evolution VIII, on 1 July 2004 at $61,990 before on-road costs, through Ralliart and under a low-volume scheme - roughly 100 cars in 2004 and perhaps another hundred from February 2005. It was not this car. The official Australian Evo VIII was European specification: a five-speed gearbox, and 195kW and 355Nm after emissions tuning, with a power-up kit fitted at the first service. The MR is the Japanese-market car, on sale from February 2004, with the six-speed close-ratio box, 206kW and 400Nm. Every Evolution VIII MR in this country arrived as a private import and was complied here. There is therefore no Australian-delivered MR cohort, no import penalty to apply, and no premium available for local delivery - the import IS the market, which is unusual enough to state plainly. If a listing claims an Australian-delivered MR, the claim is wrong before anything else about the car is examined.

Because pricing one off the other understates it: an aluminium roof panel and aluminium door beams, Bilstein dampers, BBS forged wheels, the six-speed gearbox, a roof vortex generator, a revised front limited-slip differential, a revised turbine housing, revised camshafts, lighter balance shafts and a dual-solenoid wastegate. The active centre differential, active yaw control, Brembo brakes and the 4G63 itself are shared with the GSR.

They run $32,150, $32,500, $37,000, $40,250, $46,250, $50,000, $51,000 and $52,000, median $43,250, and they are the entire Australian public record for this variant. No Shannons, Lloyds, Grays, Manheim or Burns and Co result for an Evolution VIII of any specification appears anywhere between 2023 and 2026. That single channel is itself a risk: the record describes one room, not the market.

And the record is unusually clear about it. All eight cars were modified to some degree and not one was a preserved standard example. The second-highest result in the set - $51,000 at 130,658 kilometres - was a resprayed car with a heavily built engine and one key. The best comparable available, $50,000 at 86,800 kilometres in March 2026, carried only an exhaust, gauges, an air box and a head unit. The generic warning that modification narrows the buyer pool is not borne out here; what IS punished is missing documentation.

Across the eight results a fit against distance and date explains about three fifths of the variance and costs roughly $1,750 per 10,000 kilometres, while the time term is close to flat. The high-kilometre band clusters tightly - $32,150 at 171,583, $32,500 at 144,676 - and this record’s kilometre coefficient is set to match.

The Australian averages put the Evolution VI Tommi Makinen at about $63,100 and the wider VI at $50,600, both easing about a fifth year on year, against $42,600 for the MR and $36,800 for the Evolution VIII as a whole. The MR is the only 4G63 Evolution whose Australian direction is up rather than down.

Internationally the IX MR is the peak 4G63 car and prices like it - a low-mileage American car made US$111,000 in July 2026. Australia has exactly one IX MR result, $46,250 in May 2024 at 85,728 kilometres, which adjusts to roughly $47,300 against the VIII MR’s $50,000 at almost identical distance. That is one observation and it is an absence of evidence rather than a finding: the honest reading is that Australia has not yet repriced the IX MR the way America has, not that it never will.

The British record is a separate universe driven by the FQ-400 homologation cars at GBP58,500 to GBP70,460, and ordinary British Evolution VIIIs average about GBP19,155. America pays for originality - a 6,000-mile MR made US$66,000 in November 2025 while a modified 25,000-mile MR made US$36,750 two months later. Australia is the cheapest of the three markets for this car. Japanese auction data could not be obtained.

In any source consulted; the 21,970 above is total Evolution VIII production across every variant and market, and the survivor estimate for Australia is an estimate.

The paragraph above says the capped figure is a ceiling rather than an estimate and reads about fifteen per cent optimistic on a high-distance Evo. On the September car at 160,812 kilometres the model now returns $33,297 against the $34,320 the cap returned and the $32,250 the room actually paid, so the fifteen per cent became three. At 171,583 kilometres it returns $32,295 against a result of $32,150. At 52,269 kilometres it returns $56,563 where the cap returned $43,680. The straight line with a rail at twelve per cent has been replaced by a curve that carries this record's own 4.1 per cent as its slope at 115,000 kilometres and keeps curving past it, which is what the four capped results in this set needed.