YOU’VE either got a collector’s mentality or you haven’t.
Take eBay vendor ‘samsuam’ as an example. He was probably one of those kids who received Star Wars figures for Christmas and then refused to take them off their card backing, preferring instead to build a dehumidified vault for them in order to onsell at a huge markup twenty years later.
Maybe he planned to put his kids through college on the back of a vinyl-cape Jawa sale. That’s just supposition. What we do know is that he’s selling the vehicular equivalent; a 2006 Mitsubishi Evo IX MR with just nine miles on the clock.
Yes, you did just read that right. Nine miles. And eBay has gone predictably berserk, with the bidding standing at over USD$101k at the time of writing. Now that production of the Evo has ceased, there’s clearly a lot of love for this grey Lancer, which is being sold with the original plastic protection on the seats and pedals, and an engine bay that looks identical to the day the owner trailered the car out of the dealership.
Back then, Mitsubishi would have charged $37,094 plus Californian taxes for the Evo IX MR. So at its current bid, those couple of decades have seen this Evo steadily earn around $485 per month, every month for the last 11 years.
That’s around 4000 southern Californian mornings - where the sun rises over empty roads twisting into the desert - that its owner has been steadfastly resisting the urge to take it for a spin. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
Okay, so the 2.0-litre turbo four might only make 213kW, which wouldn’t blow too many skirts up these days, but we’d be prepared to bet that an Evo VIII would still make a phenomenal cross-country weapon. But for over A$125k? That’ll get you two-and-a-half Focus RSs, or a BMW M2 with enough left over for a Toyota 86. I guess you’ve got to have that collector gene.
Last year somebody in the UK sold a carded vinyl-cape Jawa for A$35,000, though it wasn’t reported what they had in their garage.
Check out the eBay listing here.
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