TODA's EVO is the Funny Car of the group. Dial up five grand on the tach, sidestep the Exedy clutch and the all-wheel-drive gods mash you into the Recaro seat. You can feel the earth move under this EVO's grip and torque. Initially, all four tires ignite in an amazing mechanical melee where physics temporarily take a back seat. There's something special about an honest four-wheel-drive burnout and this car can do it. Luckily, this nonsense only lasts through first gear, which is gone instantly. Sixty is dispatched in 3.5 seconds, with the quarter mile lasting only 11.5 seconds at 117.1 mph. Holy crap, this thing is fast.
But fast, to us at least, means completeness as much as muscle. Balancing power with grace is something that eludes so many. And what TODA has in a straight line, it's missing when pushed on the track. It isn't slow, barely .23 seconds off the mark set by XS at 59.37 seconds, but it's all muscle. The chassis protests directional changes by bouncing through the longer corners. More disturbing is the distrust this causes within the driver. There's character here; it's just more World Wrestling opponent than willing dance partner. Somewhere there's a driver who'll love it, and we can't argue with its pace.
We're now playing in the realm of the big dogs. No more screwing around with stock turbos, cast manifolds or stock ECUs. From here in, the cars are seriously fast. Probably the quickest point-to-point cars on the planet, considering their all-weather, any-road hardware and their injection of aftermarket power. These cars are, quite literally, stupid fast.
Mashing the gas on the RMR EVO, we're again reminded how unique every machine is. The transition to boost in this car is about as subtle as Chris Rock at a prayer breakfast. But once on boost, shifts at redline keep the engine on song. Huge power (376 at the wheels, according to the dyno) make this EVO accelerate as quickly as anything here except the TODA car.
Balance is better in the RMR car than anything so far, but it still didn't feel dialed like we want. There is something missing. Maybe it's strange turn-in, maybe it's some lack of tactile feedback. Maybe it's that Rhys Millen himself didn't have time to set it up before our test. Our biggest problem are the Sparco Torinos, which were mounted so low, we couldn't see out of the car.
Either way, the demons of amorphous handling quirks are here. But, after a quick in-cockpit damper adjustment to stiffen things, it laps in 59.12 seconds-a respectable third quickest.
But it hated the dragstrip. Hard launches in these cars require just enough clutch slip to keep the engine from bogging, but not so much as to turn the friction material to molten, stinking sludge. That happy medium wasn't possible here. Exedy's single-disc clutch protested this abuse by slipping throughout every pass, but it did manage the road course without incident. Ever seen a 12-second car run a 14-second quarter mile? You have now
Still, inside and outside this EVO looks right. There are carbon dive planes on the nose and a carbon wickerbill along the edge of the rear wing-details that set this car out from the crowd. There's even a clean bolt-in cage, which fits well and has quick-release pins on the rear braces to accommodate four people. Details, details, details.
Two left. And they're the ringers of the road course. It's clear the Road/Race boys have a special place in their souls for being the quickest there. And the RRE car showed its guns with big-braked, huge-cambered glory. Coleman questioned its speed after his initial laps. "Maybe I'm missing something, but this thing isn't going as quick as it feels like it should be. You have a go."
So I went. And sure enough, it isn't any faster. Soon, Mike Welch finds a leak in the intercooler plumbing and the RRE crew dives under the car for emergency surgery. Round two produces only a lap and a half at full power before the problems reoccur.
This is the only modified car in the group that manages the EVO RS-like powerslide around Turn Eight. And, had Coleman been able to put together a lap that combined the Turn Eight powerslide and full power, he wagers this would be the fastest car in the group. But it isn't, for several reasons.
The day before, the big, bad, blue EVO misfired its way through the 1320 in 12.8 seconds at 104.3 mph with a failing fuel pump. This failure led to a rod finding its way through the block later in the day. Naturally, this meant an all-night swap to an EVO IV engine for road course testing the following day.
Perhaps even more dramatic was Road/Race's dyno session. Unaware that the EVO's Walbro fuel pump had shit the bed, Welch made two worthless pulls as the car sputtered, popped, misfired and made no power. With one pull left, he had to make it happen. Without telling anyone what he had done or why he had done it, he pulled the wastegate actuator off the turbo, disabled the ECU's knock correction and went for broke. And for some reason, it actually worked. Free of misfires and with the turbo pumping a maximum of 32 psi, the engine revved cleanly to 8000 rpm and made 472 hp and 417 lb-ft of torque. For the just this moment, the EVO gods smiled on Road/Race Engineering.
At this point, we have a rough idea how a really fast EVO worked. Sampling the last seven cars has given us a taste of perfection in different places. The chassis on the Road/Race machine, for example. The engine in the RMR or TODA car. The brakes on XS's ballistic missile. Together, they've given us the briefest glimpse into the stratospheric performance of which these cars are capable
Then we drive the Sparco/A'PEXi EVO.
Remember, we said there was no winner here. And there isn't. But the fastest, easiest to drive, most complete and, let's not forget-most pampered-car here is from Sparco and A'PEXi. Proof? Three timed laps is all it takes to eclipse the rest of the field by nearly one full second on the road course (58.08 sec.). Lateral grip is also second best at 1.05g. There's a lesson there.
Flat into Turn One, then neutral throttle to the braking point for Turn Two. Hard on the stoppers, nudge the wheel toward the back of the turn and get back on the gas early. No arguments. No dizzying tail wagging. Just grip, rotation and confidence. Lots of confidence. The routine is the same everywhere with this car. No surprises
There's lots of fundamental EVO goodness left, too. The steering is still as exacting, precise and full of feedback as God intended. The brakes retard momentum with unnatural certainty and there's power everywhere. Losing touch with the powerband here requires effort. Going slow is almost-dare we say it? Hard.
The power shows in the highest trap speed in the quarter mile: 118.3 mph. The e.t. is second quickest at 11.9 seconds. But it's not so much the power and speed that matter as it is the thoroughness of the car-complete in every way an EVO can be complete.
The same can be said for the EVO after-market. There's something for everyone here.From the three-grand bolt-on machine to the over-the-top EVO that does it all for, we suspect, much more cash.
It's staggering how eight cars that started on the same assembly line with the same hardware came to be so magnificently different once they'd been through the wringer of aftermarket tuning. Cars with the same turbo have wildly different power delivery. Cars with the same brakes and tires feel completely different entering a corner. This is the beauty and diversity and goodness of the EVO aftermarket and its tuners. Different goals. Different philosophies. Different results.