Great write up, Noize/Seth!

 

Nice review Seth (and rebuttal). Can't wait to see her in action!

 

Dont forget we have KNEE air bags now!! No more bumping your knees on the dash during that head on collision!!!

Speedlimit / Noize
As reviews come in, I think it might be good to just start a merged and stickied reviews thread. Something that just contains the reviews and not the comments.

 

Mo pics from the trip.
Yeah, I waited way too long to put them up. Sorry.


Orange County, California, baby!

 

Get bent over at the pump in east California!



$4.19 a gallon for crappy 91 octane gas in the desert.
I knew I should have filled up in Barstow! Funny story, this pump is in Needles just off I40 on Route 66, but I had to stop in Ludlow earlier to get gas. It was retarded cold and their pumps were messed up. It was even more expensive than it was here in Needles. Anyway, it must have been really old gas, because it made the poor car run like crap with any boost at all. Needless to say, I didn't boost and just putted around for a long time because of this.





Gettin' dirty in the desert!
Don't make fun of me for leaving that piece of vinyl in front of the hood. I removed the rest of it, but left this on to protect the car a bit from road debris. Sadly, a rock got through it anyway and nicked the car right under it.

 

Noize, are you serius with this one?:
" I know I keep saying it, but this car is screwed together so much better than the older Evos, that its worth lifting them from their graves for a chance to point and laugh."

Its sounds akward for me. Even though the chassie are more rigid, without the gizmos and bigger wheels and tires i dont think would perfom better then the old one. So other words, if you get the JDM IX with 18 wheels and 245 tires, and still lacking S-AWC, will run a same like the X or little less. But no way the time difference would be laughable...
I do not think you can point and laugh at the older versions... This is for me just plain phony.

But i might misunderstand something here . If that is a case, and you would correct me on this one , then i will pologize.

 

Welcome to Flagstaff, Arizona and two inches of snow on the ground! If it looks like I'm freezing my **** off, its because I am. Got a little bit of jean puckerin' going on in this pic for being in the Recaro seat for several hours straight.

Popped the hood to check the oil; everything was great.

We slipped and slid to Del Taco in Flagstaff just down the street from this gas station. And THAT was the bomb. You should be able to eat cheap Mex food that tastes this good everywhere!! Man, I wish we had that stuff in Nashville. Del Taco makes Taco Bell look like exploded butt.

After gas and Tacos, we got back into the snow and underway. Kudos to the beauty of AWD. Kudos to the safety of SAWC braking, which did intervene a couple of times in Flagstaff.

 

Chassis rigidity and fit and finish is what I am referencing where you quoted me above. The X chassis is lots more rigid than the IX. The car is also feels a lot better put together in that its more compliant over bumps. Bumps in the VIII and IX would noticibly vibrate the steering wheel. Not so in the X. The doors are more solid and your isolation from the outside is a bit better in the X.

Although I was talking about quality and build, you might have thought I meant performance. But I'll touch on that for you, too. Robevo, your details under your screenname say that you are in Jersey? Have you ever driven a JDM IX? I sure as crap haven't. My only basis of comparison in this car is 4 years of owning an Evo VIII and IX that were both US spec cars I bought in this country. I have driven a lot of Evos, but they were all US Spec. My X is the first SAYC car I have driven. All that to say, does this car handle better than my VIII and IX did? HECK FREAKING YES! There is more than enough journalism out there now to support this. Go drive an Evo X aggressively. Hold the stability control button for several seconds until the display changes momentarily from orange to green then attack some corners. You'll see there is a huge difference! As far as the JDM spec IX with SAYC, I am sure it is an awesome car. I've never driven one, but would love to.

 

Sorry about that little detour into X DEFENDER OF THE UNIVERSE. Now back to our regularly scheduled cross country trip.


Back in the desert again, beeotch. So beautiful out here. This is somewhere in Arizona.



Here I was pulled over on the side of the road trying to activate my free 6 months of Sirius. I had to pull over because cellular coverage out in the desert is a nightmare at best.




And when it seemed like we were making stellar time in Arizona, we got smacked with a wreck on I40 and totally stopped. Look at this poor little dirty Evo in the sea of trucks. Ever get pissed at a trucker? DON'T DO IT OUT WEST. If you get stopped in a traffic jam like this, you will be surrounded by him and all his buddies for miles and miles and you will get the beatdown of d00m.

Actually, I'm just messing around- the truckers were super nice. When stopped for 5 minutes straight, I went back and talked to the one behind me. Surprise, it was a lady trucker! She told me that there was a really bad accident a couple of miles ahead and to stay in the left lane, because everyone would be merging that way anyway. A half hour later, we were under way again.

 

the heavier car alway FEELS lot more rigid and smoother then the lighter one. You can even notice this IX vs IX RS....

Now i know it is more rigid, but it is heavier too . So in hard cornering it should be more rigid since the force will be greater.. you see what i 'm sayin? so the torsion in the body will be less. But how much less then the lighter but less rigid body? laughable???

I'm from hungary . I came 10 years ago so i didn't had a chance to drive the JDM spec 8-9. But i did drove the VI-VII. Looks like i will going back in aug. so i will give a feed back if you wish.
Also if you think you can laugh the older versions , i think you will face some akward moments on the track .

 

I hit New Mexico and drove through it at night. I didn't take many pics because there was not too much to see. I passed through an Indian reservation, and it was really interesting from what I did see.

A friend told me that the Indians are the law out there, so to make sure to behave. I don't know what he was talking about, but I was extra careful just in case.

Late at night, we passed a giant casino on the right on I40 that looked like a city. A couple of miles later, a car started coming up fast in my rearview mirror. When I looked down and saw I was doing nearly ninety, this worried me a bit. My radar detector was clear, but I lifted off the throttle ever so slightly. I got passed by this old hooptie with New Mexico plates. The driver was obviously drunk, because he was weaving all over his lane and a bit into mine. He was easily over 100mph. That was by far the most scary part of the whole trip!

 

You're missing the point completely. I am pretty sure I have 25 times more seat time in my Evo VIII and Evo IX combined than I do so far in my Evo X! I am not some Evo n00b here that is hating on the old car. I loved my VIII and my IX and give them the praise they deserve. My VIII as it was modded when I sold it would crush both my IX and my X in any contest of speed. But the US stock X is faster on a racetrack than the US stock VIII and IX. Take off the X hater blindfold and read the reviews. The weight distribution is better, the chassis in substantially stiffer (this accordiung to Mitsubishi themselves) and the skidpad rating is kissing .99 totally stock. SAYC is something you have to experience. The handling is better because of all three of those things, but mostly because of SAYC.

Stop wastin' so much time typing in defense of the IX and go drive a X to see what the heck I'm talking about. Bench racing sucks. Internet bench racing sucks more.

 

Slowin' down on the pic front. Here's a pic of the big sky in Texas.



The land is flat and sky goes on for miles and miles. You feel like you can see into forever. I got my best gas mileage out here.

This was the morning after we hit a hotel in Amarillo. So we traveled through the panhandle of Texas on I40, straight across the northern tip and thus avoiding a long time in this state. There was a lot of cow manure smell in Texas. Amarillo was nice, though.

The Texas panhandle was the home to the lowest octane fuel I have ever seen. I stopped right outside Amarillo before getting to the hotel and thought it was a fluke. The highest octane you could buy was 90, so I only put in a gallon to get me safely to Amarillo. When I got into town, I noticed that all the stations had 90 octane. Filling up with that sucked. What the heck is up with Texas and this "night speed limit" crap? I don't get that at all.

Rewinding for a second, other than the fact that Albuquerque was super nice, New Mexico was not a place I wanted to spend a lot of my second day. I got the heck out of Dodge.

Arkansas was worse. It was cold and there were tiny patches of ice under bridges. I live in Tennessee and have for over 12 years, so I know southerners are scared of snow. These guys took it to the next level. They were REALLY scared of snow. They kept stopping under the bridges and it was driving me crazy. As an Indiana boy originally in an AWD Evo, I had little remorse.

 

idk if it was already ask but is it blue blue or more burple like the Evo IX haha
dang ur gas is averaging below 20 big time huh?

 

can you post some links? for the benefit of everybody and stop this bench racing? several comparo would be nice