► Richard Burns’ Evo 5 for sale
► Just 794 miles on the odometer
► Mitsubishi Lancer GSR Evolution V
Fancy a slice of rallying history in your garage? Here’s the chance to buy WRC champion Richard Burns’ own Evo 5 – it’s up for auction and it’s as new, with a scant 794 miles on the odo.
The box-fresh Mitsubishi Lancer GSR Evolution V will be sold by Iconic Auctioneers on 24 February 2024 and it’s estimated to fetch a price between £80,000-£100,000.
The priciest Evo sold to date was the 2000 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VI Tommi Makinen Edition chassis #001, which sold in 2021 for a record £147k.
Mitsubishi sells its crown jewels
Richard Burns’ own Evo 5: a proper rally special
Finished in Pyrenean Black, S500 TMR was registered to the late Richard Burns in 1998. He helped Mitsubishi win the WRC constructors title that year, but in 1999 he swapped teams for Subaru and that meant the Evo was stored away in the family collection and rarely driven, hence the low miles.
Following Burns’ untimely death in 2005 from a brain tumour, the car was sold by the Burns family in February 2020 and the owner has spent £16,500 restoring it to OEM standard. Included in the sale are the V5C registration document listing Richard Burns as the original owner and an RB-branded baseball cap.
The Evo 5 was launched in January 1998 and was on sale for just one year before it was overtaken by the Evo 6 as part of the spiralling motorsport programme which saw the Lancer become ever more outrageously powerful and focused, before fizzling out.
It harks back to simpler, more brutish times, when Mitsubishi made waves with its motorsport programme and still sold cars in the UK. It pulled out from the European market in 2020, failing to capitalise on its strengths in performance cars, plug-in hybrids with the pioneering Outlander PHEV and its focus on modish SUVs.
Burns’ Evo will be auctioned at Race Retro in Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire on Saturday 24 February.