just buy what you can afford. it doesn't matter what people say at the end of the road is your decision and money. good luck

 

get the 8 and don't look back, best bang for the buck.

 

evo 9s have hit gotten into the 10 second realm with stock turbos...

 

For a STAGE 1 stock turbo Evo, the Evo X MR is going to be the fastest.


I have a X MR now, and I had an Evo VIII for 9 years.




The VIII's and IX's weight much less than the X's specially compared to the X MR.


The VIII's also have a 16G turbo and the IX's also have the 16G but with a bigger compressor housing.


So you would think that with a 400-500 lbs. difference and a bigger turbo the VIII's and IX's would be faster in a drag race against a X on a STAGE 1, but not so.


The X's have a smaller 14G turbo. Similar to the old DSM's but with a much bigger turbine size.


My stock 3850 lbs. X MR (with me in it and 3/4 tank of gas) did 13.2@102 completely stock, 1.91 60FT.


With what we are calling a STAGE 1 done to it, (down pipe, test pipe, intake, UICP, BOV, tune, and stock exhaust) did 12.4@110+ with a 1.81 60FT.


To go low 12's on an VIII you sort of need cams and full exhaust.


The IX's having mivec, better cams, and larger turbos can do mid to low 12's easier with a TBE added.


Before anyone says a thing, I will mention that my Evo VIII did 11.8@116+ on the stock Evo VIII turbo.


But it had full bolt ons such as HKS Cams, full 3.1 inch TBE, Intercooler, and lots of boost on 116 octane race fuel.


Just for comparison, my same Evo VIII did 13.9@97 completely stock compared to my X MR 13.2@102+.


And the MR is using a smaller turbo and is about 400-500 lbs. more. I do have a good tuner, DMT .


I think on E85 and a full exhaust with a re tune my X MR will do 12.1 to 11.9 at 114 on the stock turbo and stock cams.


We will see after the summer.


Good luck on your purchase OP.


What Ever you choose, Evos are fast my boi, .

 

In general the Evo 8/9 are better drag racing cars that can also be made perfectly good road course cars. Evo X's are better road racing cars out of the gate but can also make reasonable at drag racing.

It's all about how you want to modify your evo, less money spent on the car itself such as an older model Evo 8 means more money can be spent going faster. So if drag racing is your focus I would stick with them, but if you really like the look of the X's then it's not an impossible path to take.

I've managed to run my Evo X MR to 11.9x @ 113.x on the stock turbo on pump gas and after swapping out to the 20g compressor (still stock turbine) and MX-1 cams it's now run 11.6.x @ 119.x mph consistently on pump gas. After working out the 1-2 shift I feel it will hit 11.4x range on pump gas and should be a couple tenths and mph faster on a race gas tune. These times aren't typical but not impossible to duplicate, just a matter of using a solid lineup of parts and making sure the tune is spot on.

If Mitsubishi didn't make it so hard to upgrade the SST transmissions to hold more torque we would have significantly more Evo X MR's in the 10's and faster drag racing as they can be like slot cars once dialed in with very rapid shifts. For now I've kept my car setup with a super responsive turbo setup because we can't raise our launch control RPM to account for less responsive turbo's without ruining the sixty foot times. My car is also first and foremost setup as a road racing car and I have horsepower to weight limits in the TT3 Time Trial class I run it in for NARRA. It's also my summer daily driver so reliability needs to be high as well.

Hope that helps make your decision!