Too Fast For The Road?
by David Finlay (01 Sep 05)

Simon, I felt sure, must have been wondering what I was playing at. Among his other talents, Simon is an experienced and talented rally navigator, and he was sitting alongside me in the FQ-340, helping to guide me along roads I had never experienced before by reading them off a series of Ordnance Survey maps he had brought with him. It wasn't quite the same as having pace notes, but it was very effective, and as I tootled through a series of long, fast left and right sweepers - wary of possible tractors, oncoming traffic and speed cameras - I felt I wasn't using his service as much as I should. Then I glanced at the speedometer and found I was doing 96mph.

It was a good illustration of the care you have to take behind the wheel of the most powerful Evo IX. It's very, very fast car, even when you think you are going slowly. Great concentration is required to keep it within speed limits, and there's a risk that even if you have a clean licence when you buy the car you'll be banned from the roads before it needs its first wash.

The Evo IX is very closely related to the Evo VIII, but despite recent implications in the media it's not just the same car with a different badge. New exterior features include a revised front end, a hollow carbonfibre rear wing (the VIII had a solid one), revised front and rear lights and new 17" Enkei five-spoke alloy wheels. The very familiar two-litre turbo engine, now 18 years old, has been tweaked yet again, this time with the addition of variable valve timing which allows the Evo to operate calmly from as low an engine speed as 1500rpm.

As with the Evo VIII FQ models, the engine comes in three states of tune. The FQ-300 has the "standard" unit, the FQ-320 gets an upgrade kit developed by Ralliart and HKS, while the FQ-340 - the one tested here - has the same kit but with a remapped ECU. The result is 345bhp, top speed limited to 157mph and a 0-62mph time estimated by Mitsubishi at 4.3 seconds.

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