Nine Lives - 2003 Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII

As good as the Cosworth head is, RRE saw room for improvement, fitting its own 1mm nitrate coated valves and Crower valve springs, keepers, retainers and rockers. Finally, a pair of cam gears from AEM was added to regulate valve timing events. Cosworth also clearanced the stock oil pan and a Setrab oil cooler was installed to keep temperature down during long race days in the California desert.

To keep the race car reliably fueled, RRE turned not to the aftermarket but to a car that has been on race tracks since the '60s in some form or another, the Porsche 911. In this case, the Evo employs a Bosch external pump from the vaunted 930 Turbo in conjunction with a Denso internal pump, which in tandem provide fuel to a set of RC Engineering 1000cc/min injectors.

Since this Evo was built before the days of the American Evo RS, it was absent a limited-slip differential up front. RRE remedied the loss by installing a locking LSD from Quaife. To ensure all the power made it to all three differentials, a clutch and lightweight flywheel from Quartermaster were used.

Peak Performance of Lake Forest, Calif., teamed with Advanced Suspension Technology (AST) to provide a set of competition coilovers, while RRE teamed up with Progress Suspension to create the kind of anti-roll bars an all-wheel drive car equipped with copious amounts of rubber would need to rotate on the track. The rear bar measures 27mm in diameter.

The massive rubber comes in the form of 335/30/18 Toyo Proxes, wrapped around gargantuan 18x10.5 Enkei NT03+M wheels. Because of the APR wide-body kit, the wheels have a 25mm offset, something otherwise uncharacteristic of cars coming from the island of Japan.

Inside, Racetech carbon-kevlar seats occupy an otherwise lonely cockpit-stripped and roll cage equipped in-house by RRE. Carbontrix stepped in to add firewall and floor panels, but only because they serve a purpose on the racetrack. You might care about a good audio system, but the guys at Road Race couldn't care less. To our "sound system components" question, they simply responded, "Magnaflow 3-inch exhaust, no interior."

This thing was built to go fast, not impress the girl on roller skates at your local Sonic. And go fast it does-driver Robert Tallini has already taken home the gold at the '04 FIA Mexican Championship (Open Class) as well as the Redline Time Attack in Fontana, Calif., (Overall Winner). If there's such a thing as a car having nine lives, this one wrote the book. It's been rebuilt more times than we can count and it's attended SEMA as many years as the Evo has been alive in the states. Thanks to Road Race, it doesn't look like it will be disappearing off the scene any time soon, either.

By Eric Kieu

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