Over the past few years the country has become quite fascinated with street racing and the sub-culture that comes with it. Fueled by publicity in the form of such movies as The Fast and the Furious, 1 and 2 and a few others the crowds keep getting bigger. The movies portray the sub-culture of young speed freaks racing there cars with thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, in engine and suspension work, down any place they can find a straight stretch of road to compete for the pink slips of the other persons car. There are clubs and races popping up everywhere in just about every part of the country. Locally we have quite a few gatherings such as Sport Compact Nights, which offers a safer alternative than street racing down a local street. Check out www.sconights.com for more info.

Enter the 9th generation 2006 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution MR. This 4 door sports sedan comes factory direct with enough upgrades to keep you cool on the those hot nights out at the track. Equipped with a 286 h.p. twin scroll turbocharged engine you’ll have plenty of power to fly down the _ mile at a staggering 4.8 seconds! Try it on the streets and you’ll be heading to see Sheriff Joe and his Bologna sandwiches for a while. Although the car is downright fast it is also downright responsive. The twin scroll turbocharger design limits the turbo lag to virtually nothing and the short ratio shifting gets you into the next gear quick. If you are slow on the shift don’t worry it doesn’t redline until 7000 rpm’s and the torque kicks in pretty heavily at around 4800 rpm’s. The handling of this baby is awesome with help from an all aluminum suspension with McPherson struts and inverted Billstein shock absorbers. Coupled to the all wheel drive active center differential with limited slip front and back and you have the power getting to the 17” high performance Yokohama tires with superb accuracy. The upgraded ventilated Brembo brakes are hard and relentless no matter how much beat on them. Nice to see the engineers over at Mitsubishi havn't forget you also need to stop this bad boy at some point.

The exterior looks are pretty cool but attract a lot of attention from the guys with the bubble gum machines on the roof. Not to mention if you over the age of say 24 your likely to get a lot of crap from your buddies the first time you pull up in it. The aluminum roof is accentuated by vortex-generator aerodynamic add-ons to help push more air down through the carbon fiber whale tale on the trunk lid and create more downward force. The interior is rather unremarkable except for the Alcantara inserts in the Ricarro bucket seats. The seats are comfy and hold in place no matter how hard your hitting the turns. The instrument panel is functional and includes a boost gauge along with the other usual suspects you would expect to find. The nice thing about this sporty little sedan is it is a 4 door with a functional back seat so you can still hall some people out to the track for the speed trials your undoubtedly going to want to embark on.

All in all this is a sporty car that is a hell of a lot of fun to drive. The power and suspension are impressive so who cares that the interior is a little bland. You aren’t going to buy this for interior creature comforts anyway.