2008 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution GSR: It's Baaaaaaack

Did you get Riz a new ironing board?

As it should be.

ah, finally the lap battle was done. now lets get to the the results!

It suits the image of the EVO better with the wing on but it certainly does not look better.

take it off.....

Ahhh, much better. Without this wing the Evo looks too much like a base $12k Lancer.

Anyone who still advocates taking the wing off after reading the phrase "it made a difference" and/or reading dougtheengineer's link to Mitsubishi technical docs showing tangible aerodynamic improvements with the wing is, well, how to put it? A poser? More concerned with image than performance? Definitely not an enthusiast? Take your pick.

Percentage of EVOs that will ever see a track or speeds high enough for the wing to make a difference? Close to zero.

Reason for wings and body kits on street cars? Image for posers.

The EVO (and the STI) were designed as high speed rally cars. Not a lot of that going on in North America. People buy them to look cool and for brief bursts of power.

Sorry firstwagon, but that's just not true in several ways.

http://forums.evolutionm.net/evo-general/372618-evo-viii-production-numbers.html

You can pull plenty of other data sources, but on average Mitsu sold about 4k Evo's a year in the US since MY2003. That's about 30k Evo's cumulative in the US up to this point. Figure 5-10% no longer in service (wrecks, etc.) and that leaves us 27-28k still in service.

Now consider that at any single track event in SoCal I'd have a hard time seeing fewer than 10 Evos. How does that multiply across the country? And how many Evo's were at the SCCA Solo/Solo2 nationals, where you have to qualify by participating in numerous events? My point being that unless you consider 10% or more of a production run "close to zero", you're way, way off.

Furthermore, properly configured aerodynamics can have noticeable benefits at speeds of 60 mph or even lower. Certainly by the time you hit 80 mph a wing is having a big effect. There's a reason why in stock class autocrossing you're not allowed to add wings, etc. even though speeds rarely exceed 70 mph.

And, BTW, even in WRC, average speeds aren't that high. In fact, the maximum average alllowable speed in WRC events is about 75 mph. That means that the cars are rarely above 100 mph and do most of their work at lower speeds.

Finally, as you pointed out, the Evo is a homologation vehicle (or was). That means the aero stuff is there for a reason - so it can be used in racing. If road drivers didn't ever use if fully, that doesn't mean the stuff is for posers, just that it isn't used (but I've shown that it is).

church123,

Exactly; I can't think of an HPDE I've attended in the past few years that didn't have at least one Evo or STi on the track.

If one had to speculate on cars of which the highest percentage of the production run see the track on the back of an evelope it would go

Lotus Elise
EVO
STI
then it would get foggier (M3, 911 Porsche, etc..)

My theory is based on the fact that enthusiast short production run cars are likely to have highest percentage (not counting things like Atoms or other really extreme cars) even if in gross terms they are not highest .

As an aside, one thing I've always wondered is if the wings are so great , why didn't the STI C-RAR get one? (if it's more of a street then track/rally application the same would seem to be true of the regular STI)

That good you guys ran these two before the GT-R got sold. Can't wait to see the results...

Ewww! Wing! Get it off! Haha.