This is a 2006 Mitsubishi 2006 Lancer EVO MR SE. This is the last EVO with the awesome 4G63 engine. The next version of the EVO, the EVO X will have an all aluminum engine and will likely not be a tunable as this version. Many years ago I had an AWD Eagle Talon TSi that I successfully modified to about 350hp and drag raced back in 1994 (Fastest time was 12.9 at about 108mph). This EVO is an 'evolution' of that car and I'm looking forward to modifying this one into something approaching the amazing FQ-360, which Mitsubishi sell directly to customers in England (link). As much as I loved owning and driving my 993TT or Lotus Elise, I worried every time I parked downtown, even the slightest 'parking dent' in either car would have cost thousands to repair. The EVO will have similar performance, but I will be a lot less worried about the cost of ownership, or where I park.

As a stock car, the EVO feels fast, handles well and has an ok interior. The interior isn't high quality, but it doesn't appear too cheap and it has great seats and a lot of room for rear passengers. The first impressions are that the power steering is overpowered, it feels too light and doesn't give you good feedback from the road. Of course, this is after the Lotus, which, without powered steering allows you to feel everything. The suspension seems very good, but with the light steering it's tough to build the confidence in the car like you can in the Lotus, I'm sure I will get use to this. I'm tempted to lower the car with some better springs, but I don't want to curb the car or make the ride too stiff. The turbo feels well engineered, it's only from a complete stop in 1st gear that you really notice the engine having a hard time, but as soon as you get above about 1500 rpm, the engine is fine. The engine feels torquey enough to pull away in 2nd without complaining so again, this is just a little getting use to giving it more revs than you expect when pulling away from a stop. The gearing feels odd to me right now, I often end up in 5th when doing only 50mph and the car feels very comfortable doing this - short spurts of boost in the lower gears feels all you need and the engine once around 3000rpm can pull any gear easily. Running to the red line the turbo pulls well, although you can feel a bit of overboost as the turbo reaches maximum boost and then tries to regulate it with the wastegate. This means it's difficult to control the power accurately around corners, and any letting off of the gas just causes the suspension to move around a lot as the car looses power quickly. Getting back on the gas just upsets the suspension more as the turbo kicks in. The stock stereo isn't bad, but doesn't read WMA CDR's, so it's coming out. The speakers are ok, so I might just stick with them. The extra gauges found in the MR are not very useful, they are too small and too far away. The temperature gauge has not read over 65 degrees, so I don't think it's very accurate or useful. Maybe this will get replaced with an A/F meter at some point.

Modifications

Ok, so I bought this car to have fun modifying it. First thing that had to change was the stock windows. Although they are slightly tinted I wanted to get the maximum legal tint to make it not look like a rental car. Jim at Bellevue Auto Tint (link) tinted the windows for $289. As the weather was so bad when I got the car, I don't even have pictures of the car without tint :-(

Next up, performance. This is what the Stage 1, 2 and 3 parts look like from Buschur Racing (link). I used Dave Buschur's parts when I modified my Eagle Talon, and even drop to Ohio to participate in one of his events once. I'm sticking to modifications in Dave's stages so that his modified ECU will be a good match for the car and I should get maximum drivability. These three stages will add approximately 70hp to the  stock car, making it able to run a 1/4 mile about the same speed as my old 993TT. The cost for all these parts was just under $3,000. Here is a photo of all the individual pieces:

At the local garbage dump they have weigh scales, so I was able to weigh the stock car, with a full tank of gas and myself (170lb) at 3480lb. I am also getting a 'base line' dynamometer run done at a F.A.M.E Automotive (link). Once this is done I will start installing the parts. Here is a shot of the stock engine:

This morning I went to have the car dyno'ed- here are the results:

 Car being setup for the first run

So the stock car peaked at about 252hp at the wheels, which sound about right as it only has 1200 miles on it, I expect a few more hp will develop as the engine is broken in. Typically EVO IX's are said to see around 255hp on a Mustang Dynamometer. The more detailed print-out below shows how rich the car is getting on boost, which gives me plenty of headroom for modifications before I need to worry about injectors or upgrading the fuel pump. So the car seems to be developing all it's (roughly) 286hp that it should do stock (link) with about 13% drive train losses.

I also bought a GTech Pro RR (link), which is an in-car accelerometer that can measure lots of interesting parameters and upload the results to a PC. This is not as accurate as a dyno run, but it's a lot cheaper! (The Setup charge and 3 dyno runs cost me $195!!! - and this is with no tuning - guess being the only AWD dyno within 50 miles has some benefits.....). I have not done a lot of runs with the GTech, the weather has been bad and it's tough it find somewhere 'off-road' to use it properly. Anyway, this was a good run, it shows a 4.4 0-60 and about 241hp peak, which I think is a good baseline to measure future modifications against.