Lancer Evolution X News, Info, Pics, etc... | [ALL THREADS MERGED]
I just read that the things more than likely that will not make it to production are:
The 20" wheels, and the taillights.
Oh well.
I seriously hope everything else makes it to production.
I already told my wife that this is not open for discussion........when this car comes to the show floor, I am getting one, no questions asked.......just: "Where is it, and where do I sign?...:
The 20" wheels, and the taillights.
Oh well.
I seriously hope everything else makes it to production.
I already told my wife that this is not open for discussion........when this car comes to the show floor, I am getting one, no questions asked.......just: "Where is it, and where do I sign?...:
Originally Posted by Reptile
I already told my wife that this is not open for discussion........when this car comes to the show floor, I am getting one, no questions asked.......just: "Where is it, and where do I sign?...:
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From: Charlotte, NC
Originally Posted by EVOQUICK
Just read a good article in CAR magazine. (or was it EVO magazine)
I'll type in the article shortly, but the pics are amazing! I'd highly recommend that lovers of the future EVO X buy this US$9.25 issue!
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Posts: 135
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From: Charlotte, NC
CAR magazine December 2005 issue
(table of contents):
84 Japanese icons reborn: new Evo X & new Skyline GT-R
(pg. 84):
BE AFRAID…BE VERY AFRAID
The all-new Nissan Skyline GT-R and Mitsubishi Evo X promise to be devastatingly good
THEY ARE SUPERCAR LEGENDS, Japanese icons – and from 2007 they will be reborn. The 2005 Tokyo motor show heralded the first glimpse of Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution X and Nissan’s all-new Skyline GT-R.
Mitsubishi labelled its car the Concept-X, Nissan’s went by the name GT-R Proto. Ignore the nothing-to-see-here Japanese coyness of the official line – both cars will be smoking rubber two years from now, little changed from the menacing pair pictured on these pages.
Simultaneously, the Evo and GT-R have discovered style. Pumped-up bodywork punctured with vents, mean-eyed headlamps, sweeping rooflines – the Japanese have recaptured the flair that created supercars like Honda’s departing NSX and Toyota’s long-gone Supra.
The Evo X and GT-R are blood brothers. Born out of motorsport, with high revving turbo engines for blistering acceleration and trick four-wheel drive systems that dismiss sweepers with contemptuous ease. But they are also bitter rivals, the snarling flagship sports cars of two Japanese brands overshadowed by Toyota and Honda.
At Tokyo, they swept their brands into the spotlight. And gave notice to fans of performance cars worldwide that 2007 will be a very special year.
(pg. 86):
MITSUBISHI EVO X
FUNCTION. FUNCTIONAL. Functionality. Listen to the tape of our 40-minute conversation with Omer Halilhodzic and you’ll hear variations on the f-word 80 times. It’s exactly what you want to hear from the designer tasked with redesigning the ultimate anti-design car. The look of the current Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with latte-sipping men in black rollnecks and everything to do with dirty-handed blokes in overalls.
It started as a porridge, three-box Japanese saloon with a wing and got progressively more steroidal as its power multiplied. The Evo has always been as ugly as it is fast, but like a broken nose or cauliflower ear its deformities have always signalled its intentions and been part of its appeal.
84 Japanese icons reborn: new Evo X & new Skyline GT-R
(pg. 84):
BE AFRAID…BE VERY AFRAID
The all-new Nissan Skyline GT-R and Mitsubishi Evo X promise to be devastatingly good
THEY ARE SUPERCAR LEGENDS, Japanese icons – and from 2007 they will be reborn. The 2005 Tokyo motor show heralded the first glimpse of Mitsubishi’s Lancer Evolution X and Nissan’s all-new Skyline GT-R.
Mitsubishi labelled its car the Concept-X, Nissan’s went by the name GT-R Proto. Ignore the nothing-to-see-here Japanese coyness of the official line – both cars will be smoking rubber two years from now, little changed from the menacing pair pictured on these pages.
Simultaneously, the Evo and GT-R have discovered style. Pumped-up bodywork punctured with vents, mean-eyed headlamps, sweeping rooflines – the Japanese have recaptured the flair that created supercars like Honda’s departing NSX and Toyota’s long-gone Supra.
The Evo X and GT-R are blood brothers. Born out of motorsport, with high revving turbo engines for blistering acceleration and trick four-wheel drive systems that dismiss sweepers with contemptuous ease. But they are also bitter rivals, the snarling flagship sports cars of two Japanese brands overshadowed by Toyota and Honda.
At Tokyo, they swept their brands into the spotlight. And gave notice to fans of performance cars worldwide that 2007 will be a very special year.
(pg. 86):
MITSUBISHI EVO X
FUNCTION. FUNCTIONAL. Functionality. Listen to the tape of our 40-minute conversation with Omer Halilhodzic and you’ll hear variations on the f-word 80 times. It’s exactly what you want to hear from the designer tasked with redesigning the ultimate anti-design car. The look of the current Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution has nothing whatsoever to do with latte-sipping men in black rollnecks and everything to do with dirty-handed blokes in overalls.
It started as a porridge, three-box Japanese saloon with a wing and got progressively more steroidal as its power multiplied. The Evo has always been as ugly as it is fast, but like a broken nose or cauliflower ear its deformities have always signalled its intentions and been part of its appeal.
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 135
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From: Charlotte, NC
CAR magazine December 2005 issue continued
Evolution is the right word. It has evolved, without any overt marketing spin from Mitsubishi, into the company’s halo car. It has been so successful that its parent has almost been forgotten; it’s an Evo far more than it’s a Mitsubishi. But now Mitsubishi is in deep sales and financial trouble. It’s about to launch a new Lancer. It needs to harness every asset it has to make it work. It can’t afford to let the Evo thing just “happen” again, but it knows it can’t coerce us into the same enthusiasm for the new one. The Concept-X it showed at Tokyo is the new Evo that will launch in 2007 and, under all the adornment, is the new Lancer that will precede it in 2006. It is Halilhodzic’s sheet-metal answer to a set of contradictory questions.
‘The Evo is a legend. I was driving one as I was designing this car.’ Good start. Omer is 42 and has been with Mitsubishi for 10 years. He is head of exterior design at the firm’s European design centre in Germany, where he drew the Colt and the pretty CZ2 concepts.
‘Every day I was thinking about what to keep and what to do better, how to please guys who are fans of this car and appeal to others who have never tried it because the car is so ugly they thought, “I’ll never spend money on that”.
‘But the first thing is functionality, 100 percent. It has to be faster, leaner and lighter. It has to go through the air better and you have to think about cooling. You style the headlights so that they work better, not just look better. It’s pure function really. We thought early in the car’s development about doing a coupe as well but being a four-door is central to its character. You have to have room in the back and good boot space, but you need to make the roofline more aerodynamic to improve top speed. You just connect the lines and you get this shape.’
This is probably exactly what the Evo’s single-minded customers will want to hear, that their new car looks this way because it has to,
(pg. 89):
and not because some self-indulgent designer prefers it this way.
‘People will talk about the size of the front air intake and how aggressive it looks but actually I tried to reduce it. But we did our engineering studies and we knew how much air we had to give the engine and after the functional requirements are set it’s up to me to make it look right. We had the competition guys in and asked them what we could do to make this a better rally car. We’ve made the changes they’ve asked for.
‘This is a very realistic concept. We decided from the start that it should be 95 percent production. When we started work last year the platform for the new Lancer had already been fixed and the hard points had been set. There’s no cheating with this concept. The headroom in the back is the way it will be in production. But some of the styling of the new Lancer was still open and there are details we developed for this concept that will influence the standard car. A few of the details won’t make production, like the 20-inch wheels and maybe the tail lamps. But this is pretty much what you’ll get.’
‘The Evo is a legend. I was driving one as I was designing this car.’ Good start. Omer is 42 and has been with Mitsubishi for 10 years. He is head of exterior design at the firm’s European design centre in Germany, where he drew the Colt and the pretty CZ2 concepts.
‘Every day I was thinking about what to keep and what to do better, how to please guys who are fans of this car and appeal to others who have never tried it because the car is so ugly they thought, “I’ll never spend money on that”.
‘But the first thing is functionality, 100 percent. It has to be faster, leaner and lighter. It has to go through the air better and you have to think about cooling. You style the headlights so that they work better, not just look better. It’s pure function really. We thought early in the car’s development about doing a coupe as well but being a four-door is central to its character. You have to have room in the back and good boot space, but you need to make the roofline more aerodynamic to improve top speed. You just connect the lines and you get this shape.’
This is probably exactly what the Evo’s single-minded customers will want to hear, that their new car looks this way because it has to,
(pg. 89):
and not because some self-indulgent designer prefers it this way.
‘People will talk about the size of the front air intake and how aggressive it looks but actually I tried to reduce it. But we did our engineering studies and we knew how much air we had to give the engine and after the functional requirements are set it’s up to me to make it look right. We had the competition guys in and asked them what we could do to make this a better rally car. We’ve made the changes they’ve asked for.
‘This is a very realistic concept. We decided from the start that it should be 95 percent production. When we started work last year the platform for the new Lancer had already been fixed and the hard points had been set. There’s no cheating with this concept. The headroom in the back is the way it will be in production. But some of the styling of the new Lancer was still open and there are details we developed for this concept that will influence the standard car. A few of the details won’t make production, like the 20-inch wheels and maybe the tail lamps. But this is pretty much what you’ll get.’
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 135
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From: Charlotte, NC
Car magazine December 2005 continued
But Omer is being a little too humble. Yes, packaging an Evo isn’t easy; a two-litre turbo four making at least 300bhp needs a lot of air, and the new Super All-Wheel Control four-wheel drive system will make use of every extra millimetre of track or tyre section you give it. But he isn’t entirely enslaved by airflow; this isn’t just a join-the-ducts exercise. He has the freedom finally to give the Evo the wider desirability that BMWs and Audis of the same price but infinitely lesser performance enjoy. And he has the responsibilty finally to give Mitsubishi some sort of coherent corporate image, without which it will struggle to salvage its sluggish, scandal-hit sales. View this car next to the Concept-Sportback shown at Frankfort a month before and you start to get the broader intention.
‘I wanted a clean design, with the correct proportions. Both cars have that. Something that would be timeless and not appeal to fashion like BMW is doing with surfacing, but a decent, nice-looking car with no mistakes on it. This concept is different to the Sportback in some respects. You have to see it to understand and it’s not so clear in this colour but it’s flatter, stronger and squarer. I tried to be a bit brutal, a bit macho. I think an Evo should be. I also wanted the car’s technology to show in the design. We’re revealing it in Japan where they like big wings, so it has one, but it looks just as good with a little lip at the back. I’ll have mine that way.
‘The Evo is a cult car but Mitsubishi doesn’t have such a strong image and we have to create a new look. We have to keep the company’s DNA alive. We can’t just abandon it to do something completely different. We’re starting to do that, but it takes years. You will see some kind of connection. You might not see that grille on every car. The Evo needs big mouth, but a smaller car or a city car won’t be so aggressive but you will see some Mitsubishi DNA in all of them.’
And you think you are desperate to get hold of a new Evo? Mitsubishi’s salesmen around the world are pacing the floors of their empty showrooms now, waiting for these cars to arrive, and hoping the customers will follow them. That’s the new Evo’s most important function.
BEN OLIVER
(pg 86 Evo IX picture caption):
The benchmark
Why we love the Mitsubishi Evo IX
This is as subtle as a tart in tart’s clothing. A humble Lancer saloon that was sucking a grenade when it went off. And on real-world roads, in real-world weather, it’ll outpace all but the GT-R.
Below 3000rpm, when the turbo hasn’t spooled up, the 2.0-litre four won’t accelerate with any conviction. But the next thing you know, the turbo has kicked in and you’re flying past 130mph.
‘I wanted a clean design, with the correct proportions. Both cars have that. Something that would be timeless and not appeal to fashion like BMW is doing with surfacing, but a decent, nice-looking car with no mistakes on it. This concept is different to the Sportback in some respects. You have to see it to understand and it’s not so clear in this colour but it’s flatter, stronger and squarer. I tried to be a bit brutal, a bit macho. I think an Evo should be. I also wanted the car’s technology to show in the design. We’re revealing it in Japan where they like big wings, so it has one, but it looks just as good with a little lip at the back. I’ll have mine that way.
‘The Evo is a cult car but Mitsubishi doesn’t have such a strong image and we have to create a new look. We have to keep the company’s DNA alive. We can’t just abandon it to do something completely different. We’re starting to do that, but it takes years. You will see some kind of connection. You might not see that grille on every car. The Evo needs big mouth, but a smaller car or a city car won’t be so aggressive but you will see some Mitsubishi DNA in all of them.’
And you think you are desperate to get hold of a new Evo? Mitsubishi’s salesmen around the world are pacing the floors of their empty showrooms now, waiting for these cars to arrive, and hoping the customers will follow them. That’s the new Evo’s most important function.
BEN OLIVER
(pg 86 Evo IX picture caption):
The benchmark
Why we love the Mitsubishi Evo IX
This is as subtle as a tart in tart’s clothing. A humble Lancer saloon that was sucking a grenade when it went off. And on real-world roads, in real-world weather, it’ll outpace all but the GT-R.
Below 3000rpm, when the turbo hasn’t spooled up, the 2.0-litre four won’t accelerate with any conviction. But the next thing you know, the turbo has kicked in and you’re flying past 130mph.
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From: Charlotte, NC
Car magazine December 2005 issue ccontinued
It’s a switch, either on or off. When you’re driving with conviction the Evo’s terrific. The relentless pace, beautifully balanced body control, the ultra-sharp front end and steering that never leaves you in any doubt of what the front wheels are up to – they all leave you astonished and slightly flushed. The rest of the time the cheap interior, turbo lag, droning exhaust and try-hard looks will just wind you up. ANGUS FITTON
(pg 87 & 88 picture captions):
SPEED
Evo X will be less powerful than the new GT-R but it’s a lighter car. Trust us, it won’t be slow
STYLING
Everything does two jobs: looking good and working well. Lights look mean and stay tucked out of the breeze
WORK IN PROGRESS
The production cabin could be a lot like this. It certainly couldn’t be duller than the current car’s if it tried
INTERIOR
Evo X has an entirely new body, slightly bigger in every direction, with more room in the back. There’s a hint of coupe about the lines, but the practicality of four doors and a boot
(pg 93 picture caption of full page pic of rear of Evo X):
NEW WORLD ORDER
Cheaper than Europe’s supercars but smarter and more refined than previous Japanese musclecars, the Skyline and Evo present a very 21st century way of driving fast
(pg 92 picture caption of 5 cars):
Remember these?
Japan’s forgotten supercars
Mazda RX-7: Started as a weedy rival to Porsche’s 924 but grew into a serious and costly sub-supercar
Toyota Supra: Originally a Celica spin-off, later a viciously powerful bewinged Ferrari chaser
Yamaha OX99: Odd-looking stillborn early-‘90s supercar with 400bhp F1-derived V12 engine and 1+1 seating
Nissan 300ZX: Mid-engined Z’s 276bhp twin-turbo V6 made wet roads very interesting
Honda NSX: Not exactly forgotten, but you could count annual UK sales without taking your soccks off. Dies very soon
(pg 87 & 88 picture captions):
SPEED
Evo X will be less powerful than the new GT-R but it’s a lighter car. Trust us, it won’t be slow
STYLING
Everything does two jobs: looking good and working well. Lights look mean and stay tucked out of the breeze
WORK IN PROGRESS
The production cabin could be a lot like this. It certainly couldn’t be duller than the current car’s if it tried
INTERIOR
Evo X has an entirely new body, slightly bigger in every direction, with more room in the back. There’s a hint of coupe about the lines, but the practicality of four doors and a boot
(pg 93 picture caption of full page pic of rear of Evo X):
NEW WORLD ORDER
Cheaper than Europe’s supercars but smarter and more refined than previous Japanese musclecars, the Skyline and Evo present a very 21st century way of driving fast
(pg 92 picture caption of 5 cars):
Remember these?
Japan’s forgotten supercars
Mazda RX-7: Started as a weedy rival to Porsche’s 924 but grew into a serious and costly sub-supercar
Toyota Supra: Originally a Celica spin-off, later a viciously powerful bewinged Ferrari chaser
Yamaha OX99: Odd-looking stillborn early-‘90s supercar with 400bhp F1-derived V12 engine and 1+1 seating
Nissan 300ZX: Mid-engined Z’s 276bhp twin-turbo V6 made wet roads very interesting
Honda NSX: Not exactly forgotten, but you could count annual UK sales without taking your soccks off. Dies very soon
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From: Pittsburgh, PA
Originally Posted by Axel
‘But the first thing is functionality, 100 percent. It has to be faster, leaner and lighter. It has to go through the air better and you have to think about cooling. You style the headlights so that they work better, not just look better. It’s pure function really.
YES lighter... That's what I needed to hear
Axel is Mad I tell you! Mad! Great job, great info. Mitsu will build this car. We probably don't realize what this will do for the rest of the line (but they do). That's why they are throwing the best at this puppy. I see it coming in around 3100lbs maybe less and if it has a level of refinement (just enough) to pull some euro sales away, watch out boys.
I personally want to sell (somehow) my 05 by the end of 06 because when these X's come out they are really going to be hot. However I don't like the idea of buying a first year model anything...so we will see. I was just pondering another new porsche down the road perhaps and I saw this thread and it got me thinking.....36-38k I bet and over 300 base h.p. Man those numbers are going to look mighty good. Can you imagine if the tranny is worth it weight you could see 0-60 in like 4.3 and a 12.9 quarter. LIGHTER WITH MORE H.P. AND A BETTER TRANNY MEANS TRULY SICK NUMBERS. (sorry I hate slang) Ahem I am excited.
Keep em coming Ax
I personally want to sell (somehow) my 05 by the end of 06 because when these X's come out they are really going to be hot. However I don't like the idea of buying a first year model anything...so we will see. I was just pondering another new porsche down the road perhaps and I saw this thread and it got me thinking.....36-38k I bet and over 300 base h.p. Man those numbers are going to look mighty good. Can you imagine if the tranny is worth it weight you could see 0-60 in like 4.3 and a 12.9 quarter. LIGHTER WITH MORE H.P. AND A BETTER TRANNY MEANS TRULY SICK NUMBERS. (sorry I hate slang) Ahem I am excited.
Keep em coming Ax
Originally Posted by fletch
However I don't like the idea of buying a first year model anything...so we will see.
Keep em coming Ax
Keep em coming Ax
I mean if the X doesnt do well on sales...it might just be the last new car they make.
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Joined: Nov 2005
Posts: 135
Likes: 0
From: Charlotte, NC
Originally Posted by fletch
Keep em coming Ax
Originally Posted by Reptile
....when this car comes to the show floor, I am getting one, no questions asked.......just: "Where is it, and where do I sign?...:
