A while ago, like soooo 2009 ago, we built a evo coupe. Wait, what you say? They never made an evo coupe...! No, Mitsubishi didnt, but they should have. In fact they planned to, until the marketing department totally nixed the idea due to the market being bigger for a 4 door small sedan. So the little Coupe (Lancer in Australia, Mirage in the US, although the little three-door was called the Mirage here; oh forget it, Im not going to try and explain that, except the 4 door was also called the Mirage in the US... dont start on me, we continue). Anywho... MEEK automotive had built a few evo coupes by now, mostly for the show pony people, you know sweet and nice paint jobs, huge bazooka mufflers hanging out the back, 50kilogram speakers and subwoofers in the back, not us baby! We went for less weight, ugly looks and raw speed, and we found it. The car pictured here was built in 3 months by MEEK, with the help of Brett, his workshop assistant/manager/Evo gearbox and transfer case expert (in fact, he's called Mr Gears).
We started with a bare shell I scoured from the piles of a dismantler here in Sydney, and dragged over to MEEK's workshop. I should mention at this time that it was merely my idea, it was my friend Josh Robinson in Perth that funded the whole thing, he got me for free to get the project going and keep it on (almost) schedule. As I was saying, we had a shell, and got it to MEEK's where we then tore it apart, removed the rear floor, cut out the rear chassis rails for the suspension mounts, and then did the same to a donor evo 6 rear end MEEK salvaged.
In went the evo 9RS rear diff, evo 6 RS cradles, evo 6 RS rear floor, then the evo 7 GTA donor engine got bigger cams, titanium retainers, race springs, 20G turbo, MEEK piping, and evo 6 flashed ECU. Then a brand new evo 9 Rs gearbox went in, evo 6 front and rear axles, mated to brand new hub bearing carrier knuckles, and a stock evo 6 intercooler.
Then it went off to the shop for some body work mods to fit the rear flares, front evo 6 TME front bumper.
Then it went to SouthCoast suspension for the chassis and suspension balance with the fantastic KW coil overs off an evo 9.
Total weight: 1107 kilos. We never dyno'd it but we figure about 400hp at the flywheel. Whatever it was it projected the little coupe to 60mph from stop up a slight incline in just 3.0 sec flat!! Suck that Veyron!
Now, with time and more additions the car will be even more developed, when you consider we just finished it before we had to go to the start line of a big driving event, we did well, and still did a 1:44 at the huge Eastern Creek track, wouldve been faster if we A: had a front LSD in it as the front tyres were spinning in 3rd gear, and B: even knew which way the track went over the blind crest. You see I'd only ever done two laps of the place, and that was three years prior, and they were both real slow.
We are in the start of getting the pieces together to build another evo coupe, but this time we'll do it differently by having brand new rear frame rails and floor installed into the chassis by a body shop, then we just bolt all the evo bits on, you know, like 2.6 stroker, 20G turbo, oversized piping, and induction, blah, blah. Dreaming? Yes, sort of, for now.
And why am I telling you about this? Well, we really can't use this car in most (99%) of all events here in Australia, but we can run it at Pikes Peak in 2011. Monster Tajima's car has 950hp and weighs about 1300 kilos. We think we ca do 700hp and about 900kilos, but with a smaller volume (by area) of drag.
Sorry, dreaming again...
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