Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VI Tommi Mäkinen Edition

Mitsubishi built the Tommi Mäkinen Edition to celebrate four consecutive WRC drivers' titles, 1996 through 1999, and it shows in every change: a quicker steering rack, lowered and retuned suspension, a titanium-aluminide-turbine turbo on RS cars that spools like a light switch, a deeper front lip and 17-inch white Enkeis under optional WRC-style decals. The 4G63 stayed at Japan's gentleman's-agreement 280 PS, which everyone understood to be a polite fiction. It is the Evo VI distilled to its rally-bred essentials — 'Evo 6.5' to those keeping count.

The TME arrived as the Group A era's victory lap. Mäkinen's red-and-white Ralliart livery was the poster on ten thousand bedroom walls, Gran Turismo made the car a default garage pick, and the 4G63's appetite for boost turned street cars into 400-horsepower gravel-stage cosplay. Against Subaru's Impreza 22B it formed one half of the great rally-special rivalry, argued in car parks from Osaka to Essex and never settled.

Around 2,500 TMEs were built, and the survivors have been thinned by rally stages, drift days and two decades of 4G63 abuse — unmodified Passion Red cars are the grail. When December 1999 build dates cleared the US 25-year rule in late 2024, the market did exactly what everyone predicted: Japanese exporters ran out of honest cars, auctions spiked past six figures, and the TME graduated from forum hero to investment-grade rally artefact.