CNBC Business | THE BANZAI BELTER FROM MARANOUCHI

THE BANZAI BELTER FROM MARANOUCHI

RICHARD LOFTHOUSE drives the latest rally-derived Mitsubishi Evolution

There are certain cars that win your heart despite all their manifest shortcomings, not to say lunatic irrelevances. The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX FQ-360 is one of them. It falls into the unfashionable category of “sports saloon”, meaning that it’s actually a car and not a hairdresser special, nor a massive clonking SUV, nor a delicate supercar.

The sports saloon is typically a go-faster version of a humble but authentic car, possessing a trunk, four doors and four seats. It does what it says on the tin, only faster. Prime examples are the Audi RS 4, BMW M3 and Mercedes-Benz C55 AMG.

The manifest attraction of a sports saloon is its “Q-ship” factor. This refers to a type of ship used in both World Wars; disguised to look like vulnerable merchant vessels, they would lure German submarines to the surface only to reveal a battery of heavy guns. All sports saloons are “Q-cars” simply because they blend in so well with ordinary traffic yet go as fast as, or faster than, exotically styled supercars.

The sub-category in this case is also a sub-culture, mixed up with World Rally Championship heritage and blistering off-road performance underpinned by four-wheel-drive traction – in other words, banzai Japanese belters of which the Lancer is merely one. Think the Subaru WRX, Nissan Skyline or anything else shown off to lewd effect in the crudely appealing Vin Diesel movie The Fast and the Furious.

Admittedly the banzai elements erode the Q-car appeal, but they are magnified to comic-book proportions in the Mitsubishi press kit – this alludes aggressively to the “carbon fibre front lip spoiler and ‘shark’s tooth’ rear vortex generator”, not to mention the ghastly prospect of a dealer-fit “decal kit” that will cover your car in lurid sponsor stickers at no extra cost.

But never underestimate the sheer dullness that is a Japanese saloon car. Apart from its graceless, tuner-esque exhaust and its giant spoiler wing, you wouldn’t look twice at this car in the street. The FQ-360 (say it again – this is not a car for polite society) looks and sounds like a victim of after-market tuning, with throbby exhaust acoustics and dubious social connotations.

Chuck away all the preconceptions, however, and the plain fact is that this is a wonderfully resolved vehicle. The immediate impression is of a strongly screwed-together platform that could take a real beating. It feels so incredibly composed from the off that you know you’re in good hands. The steering is precise, the cornering flat and the performance shattering. If the term “Q-car” is a semi-decent metaphor, the FQ-360 is its ultimate expression – when the heavy guns are unleashed, it’s suddenly in a parallel universe. No car I have been in was as quick as this, save for the extremely rare Porsche 911 GT1, built in the late 1990s for Le Mans and made for the road in a tiny edition.

Now, the Porsche is a million-pound car with a true three-second 0-100 km sprint time that compresses time and space to the point where no driver can keep abreast of what’s happening. The FQ-360, on the other hand, is a working class hero costing €50,000, and astonishingly it’s not far behind with a sprint time of 3.9 seconds. What the two have in common is twin turbos, and that is the secret behind the rocket-launch effect of the acceleration.

Is the Mitsubishi Evolution therefore the best performance car that money can buy? Yes, of course it is. If you’re an adrenalin junkie, this is the car for you. But there aren’t many places where you can let it fly, and the immediate sensation is wearying after a while – at which point you may start to ponder the Mitsu’s lack of a beautiful interior or exterior and its dedication to the cause of motorsport.

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