Images: Mitsubishi Press

Evolution is the right word. The look of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with latte-sipping men in black rollnecks and everything to do with dirty-handed blokes in overalls.

This purposeful product started as a porridge, three-box Japanese saloon with a wing and got progressively more steroidal as its power multiplied. It has always been as ugly as it is fast, but like a broken nose or a cauliflower ear its deformities have always signalled its intentions and been part of its appeal.

The Evo was actually an evolution from the Colt 2000 Turbo (above), whose badge it wore at the beginning of the journey in 1981. The looks have a clear link to the Evo, but the engine is the real bond; this was the first to use the legendary, endlessly-tunable 4G63 2-litre turbo four which would remain an Evo constant until the introduction of the Evo X in 2007. It made around 168bhp here, but eventually would be stretched to over 800bhp. Mirror-script lettering on the front spoiler — ‘Turbo 2000’ in this case – urgently needs to make a comeback.

Evo I
Built as the basis of the World Rally Car, and the first to carry the Evo name and number. Arrived in Japan in 1992, making around 240bhp. The II and III were pretty similar (to non-Evo geeks, anyway).

Evo anoraks take note: what follows is just a few of our personal highlights, and not an exhaustive history.

Evo V
The Evo IV introduced in 1996 was an all-new car and the basis of the Evo V and VI, but it was these later cars that started to arrive in Europe in numbers, first from grey importers and, eventually, officially through Mitsu’s importers here. Sparked the Evo-Impreza wars that dominated car magazine covers in the late nineties and early noughties.

Evo VII
Another all-new car in 2001; it was heavier but kept getting quicker and cleverer. The short-lived GTA automatic version – which came with an auto gearbox and could be specified with a luxury leather interior, chrome door handles and without a wing, was a personal lowlight. Deservedly rare.

Evo VIII FQ400
Having resisted importing the Evo for too long, the UK distributor then embraced it a bit too enthusiastically with the FQ — or effing quick — series. It was an extraordinary name for a big corporation to give a car, but it was an extraordinary car. It was hard-tuned Evo with a warranty that you could order from a showroom; as the name suggests it had 400bhp and could nut out a three-second 60mph dash. With 200bhp per litre, very regular servicing was essential.

Evo X
All change, again. This time the Evo gets a bespoke body, its looks defined by fancy designers in Europe but with due deference shown to the past. All change under the bonnet too: emissions regs finally killed the 4G63, but the 4B11 is a worthy replacement and proved robust enough for the loons at Mitsu UK to offer another FQ400. The SST sequential-manual gearbox is the other big departure.

Evo XI?
Um, not sure yet. The Evo X will be discontinued from March and there’s no clear plan from Mitsu on what will assume the Evo name, but rumours from the Tokyo motor show suggest it will be a long wait and it won’t be turbocharged saloon. Something green seems the best bet, possibly usng the in-wheel electric motors Mitsu has been experimenting with for a while. So lots of torque and four wheel-drive still…

Every now and then a star becomes associated with a brand of car, usually by accident. Think the various incarnations of 007 and Aston Martin, of course, and perhaps Steve McQueen with the Ford Mustang. You could probably come up with a bunch of examples.

But it’s rare in the world of showbiz to have a situation where a global superstar is associated almost symbiotically with a car. Jackie Chan and Mitsubishi Evo is the only example we can think of.

The relationship between the Martial Arts movie superstar and the Mitsubishi corporation began at the end of the seventies, when an agreement was drawn up between the Chan empire and the car company to use Mitsubishis exclusively in his films.

Of all these, the most blatantly Mitsubishi branded is 1995’s Thunderbolt (below), in which Chan plays a Mitsubishi factory employee who graduates to test driving and then on to, well, saving his sister from the evil embrace of kidnappers, an equally malign bunch of street racers (in Skylines) and generally, the world.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But in terms of pure Evo-tastic action, 1998’s ‘Who Am I’ has to take the gong. Check out the central car chase scene in which a handcuffed action hero and two lovelies (one of whom is also handcuffed), evade a series of bad guys and cops in the streets of Amsterdam, seeing off an interesting assemblage of vehicles, ranging from an old Rover and a brace of 3-Series. Check the way the Evo itself lays waste to the bad fellahs, and the way the ‘Everyman hero’ image of the car is perfectly illustrated when a skillful stunt driver flicks the chased Evo snugly into a parking spot and thus goes unnoticed by the authorities as they streak by in pursuit. I wonder if this was written into the contract.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But its not only about product placement, this hookup. As honorary President of Ralliart China (the company’s motorsports arm), Chan hosted a series of celebrity-dotted race junkets that brought in the Asian glitterati to circuits all over the region. In 1995, Ralliart went ahead and sealed the deal into automotive immortality when they produced 50 Special-Editions of the Evo IX, with a requisite acreage of Carbon and Jackie Chan’s signature all over the detailing.

And you can see the symbiosis logically. Or what the advertising and marketing departments of the world used to call ‘synergy’ — Jackie Chan as understated, vibrant, unassuming yet powerful and explosive, the Evo and the star share a set of core values, proper and true.

The Evo might not save the world in itself, or do back flips and cause explosions with nary a sniff of combustable materials, but in the same way as Jackie Chan makes the commonplace cityscape erupt with action, this earthy piece of engineering makes everything seem fun and copes with danger most sublime…

words & pictures: Michael Fordham

Back in the primordial soup of post war Japan – a nation demoralised and devastated by unimagined military defeat, there was a little seed of determination left in the Japanese people despite the suffering endured. The phoenix rose, industry boomed and an economic miracle ensued.

This remarkable turnaround was motored primarily by the Japanese capacity for making stuff that people all over the world people wanted to buy. Especially the cars.

The Japanese automotive aesthetic might repel as many as it attracts, but in terms of sheer numbers and influence, Japan continues to be, along with Germany, the major exporter of automotive machinery on the earth. But more than that, in the darker corners of car and bike culture it the Jap thing reaches deep into the corners, as well as basking in the sunlight of the mass market.

And one of the most cultish, delightfully understandable corners of the world of Japanese car cult is that of the Evo. Having Evolved from the workaday Colt way back at the end of the seventies, the Evo has gone through a multitude of suitably evolutionary jumps.

So when we got to play with its latest manifestation, the final and numerically resonant Evo X, we felt as if we were in a position to look at the last of a great lineage of superbly appealing everyman heroes.

//The Looks//
Simple. Proletarian. Uninspiring. Badass. Boring. Boy racer-ish. These are the most common appellations we heard whilst spending a week with the Lancer EvoLution X SST FQ 330. It’s a keyboardful of signifiers that means the following: this is the tenth manifestation of the Lancer Evo, it’s rather quick, comes with a dual clutch semi-auto box with flappy paddles and packs 330 horsepower.

What it amounts to at skin level is a very old fashioned format, the three box, four door three-pillared formula that arch rivals Subaru ditched last time out for their Heavy-Industry flagship the Prezza, and probably to their regret.

The fact that now the three box Scooby is back is testament to its enduring appeal, and its one you can’t imagine Mitsubishi ever losing sight of. But at either end of the Evo X there are of course telltale pantomimes of its far-from-complacent DNA. Most obvious is that wing, of course. It’s a bevelled, three level piece of steel whose obvious utilitarian aspect is obscured by the car’s otherwise workaday stance. and the fact that it at times obscures rear visibility.

At the front of course, the various gapes, louvres and wide-open grillage whispers of the need for oxygen. From the front it is unmistakably rally-bred. On the standard version there’s no carbon fibre additions, just simple steel trimmed with plastic.

It sits relatively high so that the shocks an do their job, too, and the Yokohamas that come as standard have enough profile on them to help smooth the bumbles and keep it moving quickly in the right direction.

From the rear three quarter the car is at its most unspectacular, and with standard colourways, and nice but commonplace Alloy style, the layman could easily miss the explosive potential of this tight, wheezing, fizzing driving machine.

//The Drive//
There a simple test we’ve adopted to rate a cars practical use/fun value. On the school run, there a really appealing sequence of double-bumps at the top of a long, steep, sweeping hill. The kids want you to get air. Shameful, I know, but how can you deny the little lovelies?

Put it this way. The ‘willy feeling funny’ factor was rated ten out of ten. Read into this all you want, but dropping the left paddle on the SST twin clutch selector into second and a pre-kicker ckick back up into third, pushing the revs up into the red, will shore up real and tangible hang time. Now you’re torquing.

This car isn’t even the madman 360, let alone the full-blown mentalist that is the FQ400. But mark you, this entry level EVO is powerful enough to match most things that even vaguely resemble it and other everyman cars. Though, it has been said, on the more extreme manifestations of the car a more traditional box needs to be stirred to handle the affect, in the 330 and for your correspondent, the flappy paddles work brilliantly.

Call me a neo-fetishist, but I fail to see why they shouldn’t be standard on every car you’ll ever drive. On the Evo X it makes sense most of all, and adds to that preternatural feeling of responsiveness that even the still present turbo lag can’t really eradicate. When you push the selctor forward into Sport mode and pull the stick toward you to select manual shifting, it seems that all you have to do is think a manoeuvre and it happens. In the rough roads of the Eppynt range north of Brecon very quick changes of direction in sideways sleet were handled superbly. In fact, we doubt there is a better handling car in these sorts of roads on the entire planet.

The engine revs right through soaringly to the eight thousand range, and the slingshot response from second to third and fourth is thrilling.

Stopping is incredible too, thanks to those vented discs and Brembo calipers, so that you can stomp the brake thirty or forty yards later than you would think possible and scrub off all that’s required. Balanced, confident and calm in the most challenging of situations, this thing deals with the inconsistencies better than any saloon we have ever driven.

If anything and surprisingly, the first thing to go when you push it is the front. There’s a hint of washout that surprises, especially as it is so difficult to get the back end out. What’s more common is a nicely controllable four wheel drift, stepping out to the side. This is ultimately enjoyable because it’s easy to correct.

We read somewhere that the Evo would be the quickest cross-country car in the world. We think whoever wrote that was spot on.

We’re not averse to the joys of drifting. We can dig the appeal. As the FIA outcast rebel motorsport, full of counterintuitive weighted rear ends, welded diffs and an aesthetic of smoke and sideways-ness that rubs the old guard fundamentally up the wrong way, we’re all for it.

But watching this amazing little video confirms that sliding sideways in Radio Controlled cars make even more sense.

Delving deep into this RC subcult you can see that it requires a special kind of dedication — and one that you can’t help admire.

Apparently, it’s all in the creation of the right kind of slippery rubber wear, which when combined with AWD models, make it easy to kick the back out while holding a line.

These guys have also combined the aesthetic of your classic hip hop vid with incredibly detailed modded RC models.

Power to their dextrous fingers. Highlight of the vid comes with the parking skills demontrated around 2’30″.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In 1982, when the World Wide Web, Google Analytics and ubiquitous personal pixelage was just a glimmer in a handful of geeks’ fluoro Wayfarers a film maker called Steve Lisberger imagined a world called Tron.

The film, in which Jeff Bridges played a paranoid but prescient hacker who, determined to gain access to the mainframe of a society-controlling corporation, becomes physically captured in the machine itself – inspired a generation of Space-Invader-zapping teens. But it wasn’t just the nerds and the b-boys tripping out to Arcade Funk who were susceptible to Lisberger’s Neon happy vision of the future. The groms who became car designers dug the aesthetic too.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The rumour mill has been buzzing with dreams of a genuinely desirable Electric Vehicle for years, and while the four-door version of Mitsubishi’s MiEv has been doing the car show circuit for a couple of years, this sporty version looks to be in the lead of the race to produce an EV that will appeal to a broader market than your traditional Ethical Man.

Featuring the softly glowing neon blue of Lisberger’s imagination, a fleet of touch sensitive interfaces and pinlines, the interior can certainly convince that this Electric experience may be able to be, well electrifying from a driver’s perspective.

According to reports from mainstream automotive press as well as the blogophere, in Japan the car is hotly anticipated, and Mitsubishi plan to launch the four door version as early as 2010, with the sportier two door the year after.

Mitsubishi say that the MiEv’s motor can produce up to 169 lb/ft of torque, comes with rear wheel drive and has a kerb weight of just under a metric Tonne.

This may be an Electric Vehicle that you really want to own. Just don’t break out those fluoro Wayfarers just yet.