You are the Mspeed R34 GT-R. Your entire coupe unibody has undergone extreme weight reduction and chassis reinforcement. Every detachable body component has been replaced with lightweight, dry carbon fiber alternatives. Your brakes have been upgraded to 355mm, two-piece Brembo rotors with magnesium eight-piston calipers. Your Quantum/Hyperco suspension costs two thousand dollars. Per corner. And your engine: a fat 760 whp from a fully built 2.8L RB26DETT, boosted with twin Apex'i AX53B60 turbos. You've got all the necessary bits for performance and nothing more. The culmination of your automotive perfection resulted in a lap time of 54.481 seconds at Japan's Tsukuba circuit in December of 2007-a lap time the time-attack community speculated couldn't be beat by a true, production-bodied car; if it could, only one or two GT-R/FD-badged machines might've been able to do it, on their best days.
But then came Sun Auto's Cyber EVO: a stock(ish)-bodied, four-cylinder, four-door production family car that beat your time in just under two years. What. The. Fock.
Competition is a powerful thing. Thanks to it, we enjoy goodies like the iPhone, 300-channel satellite TV programming and 22-megapixel digital SLRs for yesterday's price of a Micro TAC 8200, Skinemax subscription and about one-fourth of a Canon EOS D2000 (2MP resolution, $12k price tag in 1998). Without it, we likely wouldn't be driving cars that bear any resemblance to today's high-performance imports. In the same way as homologation requirements of touring car competition lead to the development of road-shredding giants like the Supra, 300ZX and Skyline GT-R (profiled last month), so did the World Rally Competition's Group A homologation lead to the "evolution" of lighter and smaller compact cars into turbo-four/AWD giant killers designed to dominate dirt/snow/gravel/tarmac racing, while still appealing to the general public. It was this class that single-handedly lead to the birth of the Lancia Delta HF 4WD and Ford Escort Cosworth in Europe, and Japan's Toyota Celica All-Trac (185), Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, and Subaru Impreza WRX STI we all lust over today.
If the "chicken or the egg" debate ever surfaces in EVO-vs-STI bench racing bouts, let your friends know it was Mitsu who beat Subie to the punch by one year. Mitsubishi had previously been campaigning its turbo/AWD Galant VR-4 in Group A rally competition, but as the showroom version of the car grew to meet public demands for comfort, safety and utility, race-prepped examples subsequently became bulkier on the track (or lack thereof) and were routinely upset by smaller European models. In 1992, the company homologated (meaning they sold at least 2,500 of) a turbo/AWD version of their smaller Lancer model and the EVO I was born. Such was the case with Subaru, their proven, yet growing-in-size Legacy, and the choice to homologate a trim of their Impreza sport compact as the WRX in 1993, and one year later, to release the WRX STI. The mid to late nineties then saw EVOs and STIs become the two dominant platforms of the series, and the names of drivers like Tommi Makinen and Colin McCrae become household among racing fans.
Homologated touring cars are all-out muscle. Just so long as they can be de-tuned enough to clear speed bumps and idle in 100-degree city traffic without polluting too badly, while still destroying their competition around a paved circuit, they're generally good to go. But when a car must meet the same average-Joe requirements, yet also be light and nimble enough to maintain performance over any terrain imaginable, all while being sturdy enough to survive the crashes and all-out abuse of off-road competition, a level of finesse emerges. Add to that FIA-mandated limits on displacement and peak power that force competitors to focus on chassis rigidity, torque production, throttle response, and drivetrain prowess to gain an advantage, and you end up with a car that will outperform nearly any other in almost any scenario.