Imagine you have £30,000 to spend on a small, well-equipped, executive saloon and are choosing between the BMW 3 Series, Mercedes-Benz C-Class and a few other premium-badged rivals. Now imagine being offered a car at the same price and with the same four-door, four-seat practicality but which out-accelerates and out-handles multicylindered, multisyllabic Italian supercars that are five times the price.
If you are remotely interested in how well your car performs, you would probably forget the others in an instant and buy it immediately.
Such a car has been available for 15 years. It is called the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and it has spawned some of the most successful rally cars and accelerative road cars. So why are we not all driving them? Because until now, their ballistic performance has not been able to compensate for their roughness and rawness, and their vast wings, scoops, foglamps and tailpipes make you worry that the driver is more likely to hold an antisocial behaviour order than a driving licence. Its sales have not grown beyond its tiny but obsessive following.
So for the tenth generation of the Evo, Mitsubishi has decided to give its pitbull house training.Imagine you have £30,000 to spend on a small, well-equipped, executive saloon and are choosing between the BMW 3 Series, Mercedes-Benz C-Class and a few other premium-badged rivals. Now imagine being offered a car at the same price and with the same four-door, four-seat practicality but which out-accelerates and out-handles multicylindered, multisyllabic Italian supercars that are five times the price.
If you are remotely interested in how well your car performs, you would probably forget the others in an instant and buy it immediately.
Such a car has been available for 15 years. It is called the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and it has spawned some of the most successful rally cars and accelerative road cars. So why are we not all driving them? Because until now, their ballistic performance has not been able to compensate for their roughness and rawness, and their vast wings, scoops, foglamps and tailpipes make you worry that the driver is more likely to hold an antisocial behaviour order than a driving licence. Its sales have not grown beyond its tiny but obsessive following.
So for the tenth generation of the Evo, Mitsubishi has decided to give its pitbull house training. Evolution hardly seems the right name; this car is entirely new and aims to marry the old car’s dynamic character to the build quality, refinement and equipment BMW and Mercedes drivers expect.
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