Mitsubishi LANCER EVO VIII
With dread mounting in the pit of her stomach, June Neary takes delivery of the latest Evo car from
Mitsubishi.
First up a confession. Im a very timid driver. I dont like driving at night, I rarely if ever speed and it was only at the age of 34 that I first took to a motorway. I like cars that are friendly, unthreatening and benign.
I also dislike overt displays of ostentation and feel happiest in comfortable cars that blend into their surroundings. Therefore you can imagine my abject horror when the editor casually informed me that I would be spending a week with the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VIII. The super powerful MR FQ-300 version. I wanted to crawl under a stone and die.
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My preconceptions about most cars are normally about 180 degrees off beam but when the Lancer rolled into the car park it was instantly mobbed by a gaggle of pimply youth anxious to discover what it would do from a harassed looking delivery driver. This was to be my lot for the next week. I pretended to look busy until the keys arrived on my desk and the usual clowns started emailing me the telephone numbers of local recovery services who could do a good job of pulling the car out of a ditch.
Beneath that outrageous appearance is a rather practical four-door saloon. True, using it as a family runabout does rather smack of overkill but theres a useful amount of room in the back and the boots even a decent size. The driving position itself is excellent, although I suffered from an optical illusion that the whole dashboard was set at an angle. This was perhaps caused by the rather thick A-pillars at the sides of the windscreen.
Being light grey coloured in the car I was driving, they seemed chunkier than necessary and I found myself consciously trying to peer round them. The scoopy shape of the passenger side of the dashboard also contributed to that 'not quite straight' illusion. The plastics feel a cut above the usual rally replica norm although the seats wont do you any favours if youre a little broad in the beam.
The press pack that accompanied the Lancer stated that the car would accelerate to 60mph in 4.8 seconds. Keen to demonstrate the cars ability, our Road Test Editor attempted to replicate these figures only to be thwarted by me screaming and flapping desperately as the speedometer needle arced towards three figures. Just let it be said that the Evo VIII is savagely fast.
Ill leave it to you to work out what the FQ part of FQ300 stands for! Its also extremely firmly sprung. After a ride along a bumpy country lane I was beginning to wish Id packed a sports bra in advance. The power delivery also left me wondering if Id have call for a neck brace come the end of the week.
The first thing youll notice is the catastrophic fuel consumption. In city traffic you can almost see the gauge dropping but much of this is attributable to a fuel tank so small that youll soon get on first name terms with your local petrol station staff. The FQ-300s price of £27,999 can be viewed two ways. Either its an outrageous amount to pay for a hotted up family saloon or it represents a veritable bargain insofar that with a Lancer Evo VII MR FQ-300 strapped to you its theoretically possible to give most Porsches and Ferraris a sound larruping.
Its worth bearing in mind that the range topping FQ-400 costs nearly £20,000 more.
No. Never in a million years. The Lancer Evo VIII is too flashy, too focused and just too fast for me. That said, towards the end of the week Id changed from somebody terrified of what would happen if I prodded the loud pedal to someone whod check the rear view mirrors on a clear bit of road and have a quick whoosh up through the gears.
Rather terrified as to the consequences as regards my driving licence, this was a fleeting occurrence. If youre a serious driver, the Evo VIII seems a bargain. If, like me, you prefer things a little more sedate, youll breathe a quiet sigh of relief when you see its huge spoiler disappearing into the distance. Definitely one for the boys.
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