Mitsubishi is focusing these days on its crossover SUVs. But it hasn’t forgotten the most
exciting of its passenger-car nameplates that it’s left along the way. It’s
just applying them to crossovers instead. Like the Eclipse (Cross), and this e-Evolution concept.
The Diamond-Star automaker first
revealed the concept at the Tokyo Motor Show last year, and showed it in Europe
earlier this year at the Geneva show. Now it’s brought to North America for the
first time to display at the LA Auto Show.
Borrowing its name from the
legendary, rally-bred Lancer Evolution, the e-Evolution cuts the rather
sporting profile of a high-waisted, low-roof crossover coupe. Its sharp angles,
low overhangs, and swept greenhouse open up (with doors not unlike those on the
Mazda RX-8) to a cockpit that’s as futuristic as it is racy, with a widescreen
display across the dashboard behind a small, U-shaped steering wheel that looks
like it could belong on a fighter jet as much as a rally car, with high-backed
seat shells and two massive glass roof panels.
What really sets the concept apart from the Lancer
Evo, arguably more than its higher-riding form, is its all-electric
powertrain. There’s an electric motor for the front wheels and two more coupled
together for the rear to provide through-the-road all-wheel drive with
electronic torque vectoring (which Mitsubishi calls Dual Motor Active Yaw
Control) and Super All-Wheel Control.
And whether it puts it into production (in
some form) or not, the e-Evolution concept shows that it hasn’t forgotten its
victorious past as it moves in a new direction forward under new leadership.
