The other day, an acquaintance of mine finally admitted something to me that he'd been too ashamed of to talk about in the past.

He used to own a Mitsubishi Evolution IX FQ340 and he drove it everywhere like a touring car driver.

He admitted to me, that the only car, who EVER overtook him, was a fiat Coupé.

now, I do not condone speeding, dangerous driving or just being a divie behind the wheel of a car, but...

Whoever you are Mr Evo killer, I salute you and your magical enchanted wheels. Which are now most likely embedded in a wall somewhere.

Was it on the dual carriage ways of Milton Keynes?

Maybe there is more to this than the story tells? Perhaps he lives in an isolated part of Wales where only country lanes could be driven on - this would explain the reason why he never got overtaken and the need for the 4 wheel drive

Or was it along the Fosse Way between Stow and Ettington

You're welcome.

having owned an 8 fq with 350 bhp back in 2008
i have to say i have never owned anything that was so easy to drive fast at most speeds!was fortunate enough to do a comparison with my brother with a std coupe 20vt
results were obvious but have always been impressed with the coupes bang for buck all the way up to silly speeds!
to this day havent been in anything quicker in terms of top speed the evo was indicating 175mph still pulling on an autobahn back then.. still my fave car of all owned but in terms of value for money the coupe won every time!

175 in a 350 horse evo? You sure it wasn't 450 or a bit slower? I've sat in / been ragged about in an 8 with just short of 600 horse and the owner said it started to struggle above 170 GPS not speedo though. Don't think the aero is up to much it being brick shaped

That said up to what ever speed we got it to it was mental, more motorbike than car!!

Must've been one bad ads crazy coupe driver!!

My thinking it was probably one of the few coops with the 2.4 or 2.5 conversion on them because it's a lot easier to get them up to silly HP than the standard ones as the pistons just melt in the standard 20VTs. or it could even have been one of the very rare ones with the lancia all wheel drive conversion on them, which, being lancia could actually rival the mitsubishi setup, i mean, they did win about 6 more WRCs than them.

I do believe that if i ever did get rid of the coop for something faster it would have to be an evo, nothing else can really beat the coop! and the evos 8 and 9 even have a similar dash to the coop, which I really like, although it's tacky carbon fiber, the non turbo lancers of the same generation had a faux black marble one which is in my opinion, quite sexy.

175 clock speed pretty sure would of been in the 160's gps
Had 3 people onboard too! Was sportscat highflow filter and ecutek remapped.
I realise its not actual speed.
Have seen several coupes go over 160 too! Not gps you understand!

Must've been a long straight, no coupe is going to handle like any evo, even if the evo was tired and was running bald tyres!

Yeah, i dont believe he would have had good tyres on that evo but he said it was when he'd come off a round about, suppose you do get less lag and better rolling acceleration in a coop, it's just the off the line speed that you dont have because they're front wheel drive.

Isn't the fq340 limited to 157mph.

A 300 brake coop would probably keep up if not pass a 340 brake evo on the grounds that the evo loses a larger% bhp with the awd system. I think the coop looses 10% and evo is about 24% to 34% (depending where you get your info from). Also the aerodynamics at higher speeds.

Standard Coupe loses around 40bhp in the transmission at peak power. Evo would lose a good 80-90.

yeah, a front wheel drive car only looses 10% on average to the drive train, AWD systems can vary depending on the types of limited slip differentials used, older evos had less sophisticated systems and i think they had less power loss. But on average it's 30% but that's with a manual, a front wheel drive auto will loose about 25%, I know this from when i had the FTO, on the dyno it was just over 150bhp at the wheels which equated to 198bhp at the crank. This is why in a straight line my coop is so equally matched for my subaru, both have 240bhp, but where the subaru is 200Kg lighter, it has 20% less power getting to the wheels.

Although, since playing with the suspension and actually bothering to put propper tyres on the coop with a good setup of camber, I think the coop would give the subaru a run for its money on the corners now!

That must have been some quick coop. i know I drive a 2.2 Brera nowadays but funnily enough I had a little run in with an Evo the other day. Had just pulled up at some lights on the east lancs DC when i looked to my right and saw a ginormous red brembo brake calliper. Mitsubishi wheel centres! Lights changed and I got a brilliant santa pod start. Left him for dead 2 seconds later he passed me like I wasn't moving. All I could do was laugh out loud and give him a wave. Bloody fast car that