I bought a 2014 in 2016, it was brand new and came with too many options for an ES. The bill of sale said it was an ES, the pink slip identified it as an ES, when I went to insure it the value was recorded as an ES.
There's just one small problem. When I checked today with monroney, it was correctly identified as being an SE model. How could this have happened? There are digits and letters in the VIN in certain places that identify the model of a car. I find it hard to believe that starting with Mitsubishi, the car was erroneously listed as a base model by every party that dealt with it. This type of thing is supposed to be impossible to happen.
Something else which is important. The car was written off in Feb/17, about 5 months into my ownership. I was only ever paid the replacement value of a base ES. I tried to argue with the insurance my car was anything but a base model, but hey, you can't argue against what the ownership says. I figure I lost about $5g or more between a base model ES MSRP in 2016 verses a loaded SE model.