In Mitsubishi's defense, the Evolution (as they are calling it) will be totally differant than the regular Lancer when it comes to handleing and performance. I don't think they even share any body panels. Interior is likely to be the same however.
I just read a funny article about the STi vs new Evolution (or EVO 8 as people are calling it). Basically, when the WRX came to the US, it owned the market because it was the only car in its market (sub-$25K, AWD, turbo, etc etc). So, it was king of the road because nobody else was competing. We knew the Evo was coming, but we could only compare it to the WRX STi of Europe and Japan. Comparing those two cars, the Evo and STi were very similar cars. So at the January North American Auto Show in Detroit, Mitsubishi revealed the Evo and was king of the block. For 72 hours. Everyone was shocked when the new STi was shown a few days later. This was NOT the car that the magazines had been flying to Japan and Europe to test. Subaru intentionally made everyone think that they were simply bringing those cars to the US. But instead, they put a 2.5L Turbo in there (instead of the 2.0) and suddenly had 300hp (30 more than the Evo). And while the Evo stripped all the fancy differentials that European customers get (because Subaru had been hinting it would do the same to keep costs down) the Subaru maintains all the high tech gizmos. The article was kinda funny because it was saying how pissed the Mitsubishi guys were that Subaru so successfully misled everyone - even giving the press de-tuned sample cars. Not even a single Subaru web site had gotten wind of this because only the US is getting this version of the car. Our local PBS station has a show "Autoline Detroit" (that MAY be shown outside our market, I'm not sure) and Sunday they interviewed one of Mitsubishi's USA cheifs and he was asked "With the WRX STi and your Evo coming to market, do you anticipate more "rally type" cars coming into the competition?" He answered "I hope not." lol

I'm glad that VW is bring that car you guys are talking about. Some reports say that the AWD is geared more for safety then performance, but we'll have to wait to see. But the original GTI is what got this whole craze going in the US and is still one of my favorite cars (can't they release a stripped down one that doesn't weight much though?)