well. i have to say. this just makes me angry when i see how good evo8 MR performes against the super car. but on the other hand, it also makes me laugh.
you will know.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...76935133899&am
i am hoping that one day mazda can come up with a super car with good looks and great interior

 

linky not working

 

fixed now. thank you

 

yeah that was nice i getting the 2007 one this year i gonna miss my 8

 

keep in mind that that is not your "everyday" evo...it has some 400 HP, about 400 ft-lb's, & complimentary suspension upgrades, etc. but yes, i too hope mazda can come up with something so extraordinary one day...oh wait, they already built the rx8. nevermind, im satisfied! hahahaha

 

Can anyone say "turbo lag"?

 

yeah, but that argument against that other car was ridiculous when they left it in top gear and floored it. that's why there is a STICK SHIFT. they did this with the 8 too and said it was slow...really? you don't say? maybe it's because people downshift when they nned to accelerate quickly.

turbo lag doesn't seem so bad when it's doing the 1/4 mile in 4 seconds, wouldn't you say?

 

LOL it was a good laugh when he stalled it

 

i'm pretty sure he's not THAT bad at driving manual... he stalled it purposely just to show you how heavy and hard the clutch is showing you how it's not a everyday friendly car...

 

Well yea, I never said Jeremy was a bad driver. All his acts are orchestrated.

 

It was still a good video, I love Top Gear. I'm sure the American version won't be nearly as good.

They had a good review of a stock Evo 8 and I'm guessing an 05 WRX STi. Very well done, nicely shot and edited.

They had a good one on the 04 RX-8 and gave it good reviews.

 

You can find them on google video if you didn't know, Design

 

that was hilarious when he stalled the car. even though it is not our everyday evo 8 mr, it is fairly easy to get a 300 hp evo mr to 400 hp. unlike rx8s, evos take turbos like McDonald with cheap meat.

 

It's a pretty incredible car. But IMO what's even more incredible is that it's rather easy and fairly inexpensive to make a standard Evo outperform the FQ 400, and doing so eliminates some of the problems such as excessive turbo lag and and the overly harsh clutch. That said, it also prettymuch eliminates your warranty and you don't have a special limited production car.

By the way, the only handling upgrade the FQ-400 has over the standard MR is the front calipers and rotors.

 

Its a known fact and any dam good tuner will tell you;"Its easier to get your first 100+hp from a factory turboed car vs a non-turboed factory car." EVO's are cool but not my cup of T.

 

What was the point of saying that?

 

If you took a stock Evo 8 or 9, what would it cost to go to 350 or 400 hp? I’m assuming you would need a larger turbo, better clutch, bigger brakes as well as some other stronger parts to handle the extra HP.

 

heard they're fairly cheap to mod for big HP gains. Same with WRXs. I think the same amount of cash we pay for an intake for 1-2 whp, they could net around 20 whp for the same price.

 

Any turbo car is easy to get more power out of for farily cheap. You can make any car go fast. I know both cars were awd and it was a big feat to keep up but awd is a huge factor in cornering. You give a car awd and some power and it can just pull it's way around a corner even if the suspension is inadequate to do it on it's own. I test drove a WRX once and that was he only excuse I could think of as to why such a soft spongy feeling car could corner so good. I've seen it at the track many times. You'll get a guy in an awd car who can't really drive that good and it looks like he's going off but then he just steps on the gas and it pulls itself out of the mess. A front wheel drive or rear wheel drive car wouldn't do that. To some extent awd picks up where driver skill left off. awd definitely does some neat things.

That Evo may have kept up with a much more expensive car but at the end of the day one person is still driving an Evo and the other is still in a Lamborghini. Not too much of a choice which one I'd rather be seen in. Not ******* the Evo by any means as it is good for what it is and what it costs but there really is no comparison in terms of which one is the fast exotic and which one is just fast.

The turbo lag bit was a little exaggerated but is a very good example of the downfalls of large turbos on street cars. Check out alot of the modded RX-7's and Supra's to see how to get a dyno queen that isn't that great to drive on the street. You absolutely have to downshift to get in your powerband. That sounds alot like a nonturbo car. Downshift or stay slow. At least a large turbo would have more power kick in at some point though. If that had been a supercharged car racing against it in the same test, the turbo car would have been absolutely mutilated. Power wouldn't have fallen off in that corner either. You don't have lag and don't need to downshift. It's not as critical. All turbo cars regardless of turbo size have lag in some form. If it is a small to moderate sized turbo it can spool fast enough that it isn't much of an issue but when a large turbo is used such as this one just to get large power numbers, Jeremy is correct when he says they've gone to far. This is an attempt to satisfy those that only care about power numbers and who care less about anything else such as finesse and balance which really make the car what it is. They got it. There is far more to a car that just overall power especially when it comes to how and when you get it. When it affects the smooth daily drivability of the car and it's overall balance, it's not that great on the street and at that point all that power is a waste.

 

It could be done for under $1000 if you're talking at the crank, especially with the '05 Evo or Evo IX. You do not need a larger turbo, nor a new clutch (you will want to upgrade it once the stock one wears out), nor do you really need bigger brakes since the stock Brembos are pretty damn good.

 

Not every turbo car responds all that well to mods (see MSP), but in general most do. However there's always a cutoff point where the cheap mods are done and you need to start upgrading internals/fuel/turbos. The Evo responds better to mods than any other turbo car on the market because it has a nice size turbo, forged pistons, very strong bottom end, the injectors still have room left in their duty cycle, and it has a nice size FMIC.

To say that simply giving a car AWD will make it handle well is a bit of an overstatement and IMO discredits how impressive cars like the Evo, STI, and Skyline GT-R are. Sure, AWD can save you in certain situations, but a car still has to be setup well and the driver has to be skilled in order to get good laptimes out of it.

I totally agree with you, I'd rather have the Lambo, but it's still pretty damn cool that the Evo keeps up and it's a testament to how remarkable the Evo is. The point isn't which car you would rather have, the point is that you can have a practical, inexpensive car that can keep up with cars many times more expensive that have more power. In the corners it was pretty clear which car had the edge. As a kid who once drooled over supercars I'm pretty damn excited I can afford a car that can compete performance wise with some of those supercars.

Yeah, the turbolag was pretty exagerated since they were trying to prove a point. However Mitsubishi didn't do a very good job picking a turbo for the FQ-400 IMO. It's a turbo that very few Evo owners even consider when they go with an aftermarket turbo. There are guys making 400+ whp on the stock turbo so going with a big turbo like that wasn't really needed. That car is pretty overengineered and it seems some unecessary parts were thrown on to justify the price and to ensure better reliability without having to do a lot of R&D. For instance the stock internals on the Evo would have little problem handling that kind of power, the clutch they used is overkill, the Motec is an incredible piece but the stock ECU could have been used to make that power and the stock Brembos would not have been overwhelmed by the power of that car.

In short, yeah, they did go too far with the car but they didn't have to. It's hardly a dyno queen as there are much better choices for turbo if they want to make big power (500whp+), and also better choices for the track if they want a fast spool that will easily give you more power than that car is making. Hell, the stock turbo might have been better. The one really nice thing about that car is it could probably easily just get a tune and make gobs more power since it's probably tuned very conservatively like every other Evo out there.

Here's an interesting comparison with an FQ-340 (essentially a MR with exhaust and a tune) if you want to read more and see why the FQ-400 isn't all that impressive compared to a mildly modded Evo.

http://www.lancerregister.com/art_fq400report.php