The least costly Lancer, the ES Sport Sedan, comes with cloth-covered seats, 16-inch wheels, and the features common to all Lancers.
Spend more for an LS sedan and you get smart key access . You don’t have to press a key-fob button to unlock the car – just open the door with the key in your pocket or bag.
Inside an LS, you get leather on the seats, steering wheel and gear shifter. The front seats are heated, and the driver’s seat is power-adjustable. Headlamps switch on automatically when it’s getting dark, and windscreen wipers operate automatically when it rains. There are rear parking sensors. Wheel diameter increases to 18 inches, and tyres are correspondingly lower in profile but also slightly wider, adding marginally to grip.
Spending about the same for a GSR Sportback (hatch) or Sedan gets you the more powerful 2.4-litre engine and firmer suspension. You keep the 18-inch wheels, and the automatic headlamps and wipers, but the seats lose their leather panels.
(At more than twice the price of a GSR, the Lancer Evolution Final Edition had the much more powerful, turbocharged, engine, all-wheel drive, and wider tyres with a still lower profile. Equipment followed the LS but with a high-performance slant and some omissions. There were Recaro sports front seats with partial leather trim, but no powered seat adjustment or rear parking sensors. Suspension dampers were from specialist Bilstein, brakes from Brembo, and wheels from BBS.)