I'm back and looking myself after more than a decade. Been surprised at some of the BAT prices not being very high at all on a few listings, It seems like the main issues is so few being available at any given moment. FB marketplace seems to have the most options but more than half the ads look sketchy as hell. I personally want a IX because I had a IX but honestly it's about 95% because of the seats, I will forever remember sitting in my first evo IX and going nuts over how well the seat felt, pushed the STi I had just test drove out of my mind. I wouldn't mind an VIII with IX seats (non leather) except even searching for stock IX seats has been fairly difficult (unless there's a non-stock generic recaro that is virtually the same, I am just looking for that same feel)

Also I'd rather not have the 6-speed but it's also pretty low on my list of issues, a 5-speed swap is easy enough. Full bolt-on/stock trim turbo upgrade is my wheelhouse.

 

double post..

 

Nice. I'm a little older at 36 -- for me it was similar but the movie that did it for me (and a lot of us) was Who Am I with Jackie Chan, where they had an Evo IV that they did some incredible stunts in. Also, around that time, WRC races were getting televised to a broader audience (or perhaps maybe I just happened to notice it) and remember seeing one of the cars slide through a snowy corner and thinking that I wanted to learn how to do that one day. So it became my dream car too, and around when the Evo VII came out in 2001 or so was when Mitsubishi said that they intended to bring it stateside, as stated in a past Road & Track article where they were doing a comparison test to find the "best handling car" and included a LHD Evo VII that Mitsubishi provided them.

I also can't see myself getting rid of this car, which is why I've had it for so long and plan to keep it even if/when I get another car, likely this year. I almost traded it in for a X GSR when they first came out, but luckily I decided against it and kept the car. Ironically when I first test drove a X GSR (which I could definitely tell had a smoother power delivery and handled faster but didn't quite feel as "connected" through the steering wheel as mine did), my IX SE had around 10,000 miles on it, and my local dealership said they could give me "maybe $23,000 at the very most" for it. Several years later (probably 2012 or 2013) when I went in for my 75k service, the same dealership said that if they had my car on their lot that day, they could sell it "easily for $30,000 by the end of the week."

Not only that, but not even every Mazda dealership knew how to service it properly. A lot of my older friends and cousins warned me about it. To this day, I have a cousin who is 44 and has had an FC RX-7 in his garage that hasn't run for 15 years. I remember when the RX-8 came out, I took one for a test drive and the CEL came on as soon as we started driving. Plus on the RX-8 forums, the complaints of it burning a quart of oil monthly and averaging 16 mpg and maxing out at 22 mpg highway resonated in my head.

I also liked the MR for the HIDs and also the BBS wheels but it was more money than I wanted to spend at the time, but I didn't like the sunroof or the leather in the SSL and initially bought a IX. Then the SE came out (which pissed me off since that's exactly what I'd have wanted) but I ended up getting the SE anyway.

Funny that you bring that up. ​​​​​​​I'm not saying that the VIII seats were why I don't have one (as I wasn't in a financial position to buy a new VIII when they were on dealer lots, since I was still in college), but while they were also awesome, I really hated that the VIII seat cushions were blue. It's a minor detail, but it's one that Mitsubishi inexplicably chose, especially since some of the accents that are consistent through all cars regardless of color are red -- the Brembo calipers at all four corners, the engine, the instrument panel -- so if anything aside from a grayscale color, red would've made the most sense. Plus it didn't match well with Evos that were either red or yellow. But again, some people swapped the seats out for IX seats (usually if they found an owner of an EB IX) or some other complete replacements while a few DIY-types actually dyed the fabric themselves. There were a few posted through the years where they dyed it black or grey and it looked pretty good.

 

I love the SE seats. I'm not sure they ever made a WW MR SE, but I want to add the SE stuff to my MR

 

The only difference was just the red stitching (which is just aesthetic), otherwise it's exactly the same.

The only colors the SE (and also MR SE, which isn't the official name but just what we always call it since it's easier than "MR Appearance Package") was available in was silver, grey and black. White would've been cool, if it were available I may have gotten that instead of grey since my previous Evo was also grey. But there are a few people who either painted their cars white or bought the SE lip in white, so if you see pictures of what looks like a white SE, that's what happened.

 

They did make an MR/SE...I crashed mine! Still got the seats though.

 

He was referring to a WW MR SE specifically, which they did not make.

 

Damn I feel I got a steal. I got mine with 9K miles on it back in 2011 for 19K and it came with my nt03s, coilovers and a **** ton of extras. I don't get how these cars get older and have way more miles then mine has on it and they want what they basically paid new

 

You definitely did in hindsight. But it was also the market at the time. The Evo X was just a few years into its lifecycle and was still getting great reviews and seeing some improvement -- remember that while the official on-paper numbers were the same, the 2010+ engine tune was supposedly a little better while the SST had its bugs worked out, plus they introduced some additional models like the SE and the MR Touring that kept the car interesting -- and the Evo XI was still something that was anticipated and assumed to be in the pipeline. No one was expecting the Evo to die out completely in 2015 and for the X to soldier on until then over a seven-year span.

 

No your right. When I was first looking I looked at 4 evos going between 23k and 35k.

 

According to https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ an Evo IX MR for $36k in 2005, would be equivalent to spending about $47k in today's dollars. Crazy!

 

Purchased a 91 NSX all original in 2011 for ~$24K, sold it in 2014 for $28.5K, can't touch that car today for under $45K. They only made the IX in the US for 1 year so it can only go up in value.

 

i was wondering what the deal was with the lack of listings on the forums, turns out facebook is where you want to be if you’re looking for these things

 

Speaking of Facebook, I don't know if any of you are following that Evo 8 9 10 Buy / Sell / Trade group, but it is a real **** show in there. Just look at a few of the cars for sale posts and you will see what I mean. I bought my 9 in 2014 with 90k miles for around $17k and have around 109k miles now with no intention of selling. Lower mileage ones (mostly dealer) back then were about $23-24k at Cosmo. If I could go back, I would have paid a couple grand more for one with lower miles and a non-rust belt history. Not even sure what my car would sell for today, given the underbody corrosion on it. I figured I would just drive it to the ground

 

At this point I feel like buying a properly-maintained and stock higher mileage Evo is a better deal. Typical Evo's with 125k miles will go for 18-22k while an Evo with half the mileage will go for double the price!

I'd say this one will go for over $40k: https://bringatrailer.com/listing/20...olution-ix-33/