8 Great Rides

Mitsubishi Lancer EVOlution VIII RS

Photography by Kevin Wing

It's amazing this car even exists. The EVO RS is a car just for us. Just for this little inner circle that value maximum-attack driving over all else. Those precious few who think removing all concessions to comfort and civility (and actually making the car uglier in the process) is the best way to make it better.

Consider the most significant mechanical distinction of the RS: the helical limited-slip front diff. If you've ever read even a single page of SCC, you probably expect us to say this is the best, most important thing that could ever be put in the car. It's not. With limited-slip diffs already in the rear and center of the car, the addition of a third limited slip is actually pretty difficult to detect in anything resembling normal driving.

In fact, for most people, the front diff does more harm than good. Since the interaction between the four wheels is now too complex for the ABS computer to predict, Mitsubishi had to leave it out.

So why did it bother? Throw an RS into a corner and it becomes clear. I mean throw it. Don't just come in really fast and turn the wheel; enter the corner twice as fast as you should, drag the brakes, turn the wrong way, and then flick it back around so it's sliding 90 degrees to the track (and you better be on a track). In any normal car, your next stop would be triage. In a normal EVO VIII, you could stand on the gas and the car would start to pull itself around the corner for a second before the front tires washed out and it started to understeer around the corner like a normal all-wheel-drive car.

In the RS, all four tires do exactly what you want. The car claws around an 180-degree corner sideways in total control and exits the corner so fast it makes a slow-in, fast-out road racer's head spin.

This is a rally car, pure and simple. It's made to excel at 11/10ths driving, and be tolerable at everything else. The magic of the EVO, though, is that it's quite good at everything else. Ignoring the RS's lack of A/C or stereo (both available with the Urban Jungle package), the EVO, even in RS guise, is perfectly practical. It's comfortable, rides well enough, has a huge back seatand can be driven hard over the most ridiculously rough roadswithout complaint.

So it's a perfectly practical family sedan that also just happens to have the best seats, the best steering, the best brakes, the best suspension and the best driveline ever to grace a real car. (Whatever you just thought of that was better is too expensive to be a real car.)

The only real problem is explaining this car to normal people.--Dave Coleman

Mitsubishi lancer EVO VIII RS
Best feature: The steering is the fastest and most responsive since the invention of the wheel. You do not drive an EVO one-handed.
Worst feature: The gas tank is so small, all your twisty roads have to be shorter than 150 miles.
First three things we'd modify:
1: Exhaust
There's real power corked up in the exhaust and with the EVO's twin-scroll turbo, it doesn't have the flatulent sound of old 4G63s.
2: Ferodo DS2500 brake pads
The stock pads feel a bit wooden and can't take the heat like the Ferodos.
3: A spare set of stock tiresntial
The standard Yokohamas are amazing, but you'll kill them fast after practicing that all-wheel-drive powerslide.