Mitsubishi Evo to live on as high-performance SUV

Mitsubishi hasn’t given up on its high-performance Evo models, says the Japanese car-maker’s boss, Tetsuro Aikawa.

In an interview with British car magazine Autocar, Aikawa refused to admit the Evo is dead and announced his intention to reinterpret the rally-bred homologation special to include new technologies like hybrid powertrains.

“In the future, we would like to launch such a vehicle with Evo characteristics. In Japanese, when you pronounce ‘Oh’ [in Evo], it means ‘king’. So we would like to launch this type of car, featuring EV and PHEV technology, which is the ultimate of its kind. ‘EV’ for electric vehicle, ‘O’ for king -- Evo,” said Aikawa.

According to Autocar, instead of a four-door sedan, the new Evo will be based on the next-gen ASX crossover that will be based on the XR PHEV II, which was shown at the Geneva motor show last month.

Aikawa said: “It has to be light and fast -- something performance-oriented. That’s what we want.”

Mitsubishi’s race knowhow is also expected to inspire the new Evo with the new tech and weight-saving techniques lifted directly from the MiEV Evolution Pikes Peak racer.

It’s not known when the new Evo will appear. The new ASX arrives next year but the only timeframe Aikawa has given is “far in the future”, which could mean we wait as long as 2018 before the spiritual successor to the Evo arrives.

Aikawa also warned the Evo will only arrive if the all-new second-generation ASX proves a sales success.

Heralded at the Geneva show as a Japanese Range Rover Evoque, the XR PHEVII show car came equipped with a 120kW electric motor and a 12kWh battery pack. Mitsubishi claims the XR-PHEV II will average 1.7L/100km and emit less than 40g/km of CO2.

At the show Mitsubishi reaffirmed its aspiration that by 2020 more than 20 per cent of all its production models will be pure-electric vehicles.