Are Old or New Cars Better?

There’s a version of this conversation that happens at every car meet, every track day, every time someone pulls up in a clean Evo 8 next to a brand new GR Corolla. Someone does the math out loud, and suddenly everyone’s quiet for a second.

We’re not here to tell you modern performance cars are bad — they’re not. The GR Corolla and FL5 Type R are genuinely impressive machines. But we do think it’s worth asking a question that doesn’t get asked enough: what exactly are you getting for your money in 2026, and how does that stack up against what that same money bought you fifteen or twenty years ago?

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What $35,000–$40,000 Got You Then

Cast your mind back to the mid 2000s. The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII and IX were walking off dealership lots in Japan as purpose-built rally machines wearing a license plate. The CT9A chassis, powered by the 4G63T — a cast-iron DOHC 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder — was the same engine lineage that carried Tommi Mäkinen to four consecutive WRC Drivers’ Championships from 1996 to 1999. You weren’t buying a sports car with a motorsport theme. You were buying a motorsport car with a back seat.

Stock output sat at a factory-rated 276 HP, though period dyno data consistently put real-world crank output closer to 290–310 HP. The car came with Brembo brakes, an active center differential, Active Yaw Control, and a five-speed manual with a mechanical feel that modern cars haven’t come close to replicating. It weighed around 3,300 lbs and put every one of those ponies to the ground through a proper AWD system. No drive modes. No electronic nannies filtering your inputs. Just a direct connection between the steering wheel, the throttle, and the road.

New, those cars were priced in a range that today’s enthusiasts would consider a deal. Used, in the early-to-mid 2010s, clean examples were changing hands for $15,000–$22,000. Even now, with collector interest pushing prices up, a solid Evo 8 or 9 averages in the low-to-mid $30s — and what you’re getting for that money is a car with a rally pedigree that no marketing team manufactured.

What $35,000–$46,000 Gets You Now

The 2025 GR Corolla starts at $39,160. The FL5 Type R kicks off at $45,895. Both are excellent cars on paper — and in practice, on a track day, they’re quick. The GR Corolla’s 1.6-liter turbocharged three-cylinder makes 300 HP and sends it through a six-speed manual to all four wheels. The Type R’s K20C1 makes 315 HP through a front-wheel-drive setup that’s been refined to a degree that makes FWD feel like a completely different thing than it used to be.

But here’s where the conversation gets interesting. Both of these cars arrive loaded with driver assists, multiple drive modes, and electronics that are constantly managing the experience for you. Some of that is genuinely useful. Some of it creates a layer of insulation between you and the car that the Evo generation simply didn’t have — by design.

There’s also the limp mode conversation. Push either of these modern cars hard enough, consistently enough, and their thermal management systems will intervene. It’s not a flaw, it’s an engineering reality of packing that much power into a small package while managing emissions and warranty liability. But it does mean the car has opinions about how hard you’re allowed to drive it. The Evo had no such opinions.

The Tuning Argument

This is where the older car wins an argument that doesn’t get made often enough. The 4G63T is one of the most documented, most supported, most thoroughly understood performance engines ever built. The aftermarket for Evo 8 and 9 platforms is enormous and mature. A modest bolt-on build — intake, exhaust, tune — gets you past 350 HP without breaking a sweat. A properly built setup with supporting mods can push well past 400 HP on pump gas. The hardware to do it is available, proven, and affordable relative to what the same money buys on a newer platform.

Modern cars are getting there. The GR Corolla and FL5 aftermarket communities are growing fast, but they’re not 20 years deep yet. You’re early in the development curve rather than standing on decades of proven builds.

So What Are You Actually Buying?

We think the honest answer is that you’re buying two different things, and the gap between them is larger than the price difference suggests.

A clean Evo 8 or 9 is a raw, unfiltered driving experience built on a motorsport foundation. It’s a car that asks something of the driver, that rewards mechanical sympathy, and that communicates through the wheel and pedals in a way that feels increasingly rare. The aftermarket depth means it can grow with you indefinitely. And right now, you can still find one for roughly the same money as the base GR Corolla.

A GR Corolla or FL5 Type R is a modern hot hatch at the top of its game. It’s faster out of the box in most scenarios, better equipped, and comes with the peace of mind of a warranty and known maintenance history. The technology is genuinely impressive. But “impressive” and “soulful” aren’t always the same thing.

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Old or New — The Question Is Yours

We’re not going to tell you which is right. That depends on what you’re building, what you value behind the wheel, and whether you’d rather have a car that’s ready from the factory or one that rewards the time you put into it.

What we will say is this: the cars from that era weren’t celebrated by accident. They earned it on rally stages and time attack circuits before anyone put a sticker on them. If that kind of pedigree matters to you, the market still has them. And for now, you can still get into one for less than the cost of the newest thing on the showroom floor.

Old or new — which side of the coin are you on?