Ralliart (UK) needed to curb the mass of Japanese imports of highly specced Evo’s and the nemesis that was Subaru and their high-performance models and make their own version and they excelled with this edition, The Lancer Evo IV Xtreme.

Launched at the London Motor Fair in 1999 as part of the Motorsport day, Mitsubishi showed its ultimate Lancer edition to date. A very limited number were to be made of these editions and only for the UK market. It was based on a Japanese version called the ZeroFighter. There was a massive market for these upgraded versions, the Tommi Makinni edition showed that the demand was there with the 50 cars that were imported by Mitsubishi (UK) selling quite easily.

Pushing 340bhp, this had the full package of Ralliart Tuning. Suspension, Steering, Engine, the lot. And with these engines being so tunable, quite a few of these have been modified up to 500bhp. This edition had its own rear spoiler, front splitter, wheels, uprated turbo, and uprated engine. This wasn’t just a sticker edition, this was the ultimate Evo 6.

A 0-100 in 10 seconds was supercar territory, so was the 0-60 in 4.0 seconds, this was a 4-door saloon that could achieve the figures and was actually able to put the speed down due to the extra stiffness given to the car, and its trick steering and suspension. At £5 short of £42,000, it wasn’t cheap but it was the best Mitsubishi did at the time.

But if you did want even more power… that was given by the Extreme option of the extra package in the form of the RS450, and no, it wasn’t 450bhp it was 380bhp but 450lb of torque.

The Extreme edition was released as the 340bhp and the RS450 was part of the number of cars to be released in the UK. A one-off called the Extreme S was also made. This was in white with the red skirts. this was sold by Xtreme of Dudley (who produced the car) in 2004.

All the cars were issued an edition number. A small plaque sat in the console just behind the gearstick. I think these were simply glued on and over time some have come away.

A total of 26 cars were made. and all 26 were made and sold. 6 of those were RS450 editions. The remainder are the ‘ standard ‘ Extreme. One additional Extreme S was made. However, it’s thought about 16 remain alive. One of the RS450 was burnt out completely, which was a silver one, No19. Two are thought to be living in Asia and possibly one in South Africa.

It seems that the majority were in Silver (18) and the rest were in White (8). The RS450 cars are 4 White and 2 Silver. There is also a variety of black sills and red sills. Some with the decals and some without. I will try and sort out the exact colours to numbers eventually. Please let me know if you can help in any way…

Here are some other adverts I’ve searched out, No17 is shown here on the left. The other ads don’t really give much away. ©autotrader

MORE TO FOLLOW!

If you have any genuine information that can help piece all this together please get in touch… loads more to follow

©howmanymade