In a perfect world, there would be no such thing as a car beyond the reach of any enthusiast. If everyone shared the wealth, we would all be able to drive Ferraris on a pristinely maintained country club racetrack anytime we wanted. This idea of sharing everything equally amongst a populous is something I feel like I’ve heard before, though — something that sounds great on paper, but just isn’t that good in the real world. Thankfully, even though we live in a free-market democratic society, there’s still a way for the masses to get supercar performance for many thousands less than the sticker price of something like a 599 GTO.
It’s no secret that the Mitsubishi Evolution is an incredibly capable track car. Straight out of the box, this AWD turbo sedan has pretty impressive performance figures, especially considering the MSRP of less than $35,000. However, to say a stock EVO can hang with an exotic supercar (like the Ferrari or Lotus pictured on our cover) would be a stretch. So what are we to do? As you probably noticed, the EVO IX in this story is far from stock, and we can tell you that the way this car drives is actually not too far off from what you would get from an expensive European car costing three or four times as much money. The man behind the build of this all-business EVO is none other than Chad Block, accomplished race car driver and owner/founder of CBRD Speedfactory in York, Pennsylvania. With an extensive track record (no pun intended) driving many types of cars, including everything from Star Mazda open-wheel cars and LMP prototype racers, Chad has taken his firsthand knowledge of racing technology from the track to the realm of street cars, and the results are impressive.
“When we first got this EVO from our client, George Slavov, it needed a lot of ‘rethinking,’” Chad says. “[George] had owned this car for a few years and done a few modifications, but nothing really worked that well. We wanted to take this car as a test mule of sorts to create a turnkey package that customers can get from CBRD Speedfactory and take road racing right away.” In order to do this right, Chad and his guys planned out exactly what they wanted to get out of the car from the get go so they wouldn’t have to undo much more than what they already had on their plate. Chad tells me that reliability is key when building a car that will see regular track abuse, so they tore the block apart and rebuilt everything top to bottom.
“Because of our professional road racing history and what we were accustomed to working with in the ALMS and so forth, we at CBRD see the real value in the small cost of things like the addition of coatings on pistons and other engine internal parts,” Chad says. “These motors need to be able to last for years with 40-minute to one-hour track sessions, not just a single 9-second pass down the dragstrip.
“Things such as the proper O-ringing of the deck and of the block for good cylinder head sealing is an essential step that is sometimes overlooked. That, along with equal compression on all cylinders can be the difference between a motor that’s great for the quarter-mile or for several years of solid road racing,” Chad continues. “We typically use components such as Carillo rods for our builds because of their excellent build quality and choose our pistons to suit the needs of our specific goals. This adds some cost over what other companies do in the EVO community, but for CBRD it is peace of mind. For this EVO, we kept the stock 4G63 crank because it has been proven to be reliable up to 1,000 whp. We also keep the front balance shaft in all of our race motors for oil pump cover support — you won’t find any stubby oil pump shafts in our motors, as we have seen the pumps fail from that less-than-optimal solution.”