Question: What do you get if you take a Mitsubishi Evo VI and spend a year and a half tuning it with a total cost of around $186,000? Answer: RC Developments' 930hp Evo, a car that was built to kick ass. The UK tuning business is ultra competitive and takes no prisoners. Last year, Norris Designs unveiled a Mitsubishi Evo that produced more than 700 hp, and that threw down the gauntlet. RC Developments' response to that challenge was to move up to the next level by releasing an Evo VI into the unsuspecting community with a proven 930 ponies (and 673 lb-ft of torque). To put that power figure into some kind of perspective, a Ferrari Enzo has only 660 hp, and the Mercedes McLaren SLR is positively puny with a pathetic 617 hp.
"It had to be road legal and based on a car that you could drive to work and then take for a track day on the weekend, and that's what we have done," explains the company's sales manager Jenny McKeown. The project started 15 months ago when the RCD team took their 400hp Evo off the road and prepared for battle.
"We are a very team-oriented company, albeit headed by Clive Seddon, and before the plans were even off the drawing board there were lots of discussions between everyone involved," Jenny says. "We designed the biggest possible stroker kit for a 2.0L engine, which is actually 2,378cc, the biggest that is physically possible without making the cylinder walls too thin. We designed it and sent the block and everything off to Crower in America to produce."
Yes, there are companies in the UK that could do this sort of engineering, but Crower has vast experience, and thanks to the weak dollar it was also a lot cheaper than having the work performed in the UK. Clive explains how they came to choose a GReddy T88 turbo. "We had to pick up ideas from what the powerful Skyline and Supra boys were doing. We wanted something with at least 1,000 hp, even though we knew we'd only just be approaching that figure. You can judge from compressor maps to pick which turbo suits you best. We decided that whatever we picked, we'd then make the space for it." Clive is already thinking of a swap, maybe going for an even larger GReddy slug or perhaps a later-spec HKS version to really push figures to the limit.
While the stroker kit was being put together, the team turned its attention to the rest of the car. Sure, there are items that could be bought off the shelf, such as the rollcage, hood, and front bumper, but the very point of the conversion--to get within spitting distance of 1,000 hp--meant that many items had to be designed and then custom-built. Clive reckons that the oil filler cap is the only unmolested item that can be seen in the engine bay.
Obviously, when the engine is producing figures such as these, two crucial ingredients are the cooling and fueling. That's why RC paid so much attention modifying the GReddy intercooler and manufacturing the IC piping and the state-of-the-art fueling system. In the future it wants to run the car on methanol and hit 1,200 hp, which will surely make it the most powerful in the world, despite not having the advantage of nitrous oxide. However, that will mean spending a further $1,860 on a pair of pumps, another fuel rail, and more mods to the plenum chamber. "You need to supply 110 percent more fuel than we are already running to get the same air/fuel ratio, otherwise it will just run lean," Clive points out. On the fuel side it currently gets a couple of miles to a gallon of race fuel. When it pours this Courvoisier at 4,000 cc per minute with the injectors sucking at 70 percent, a cheap ride around town it ain't.
At the moment there are three different engine maps that can be activated, depending on which potency of juice is being consumed at the time (see sidebar). The engine sucks in air via an HKS filter, which continues down some custom piping and departs out of a much-modified side-exit A'PEXi R95 exhaust, the latter part being noisy but effective. And how was it putting the entire project together? Well, despite the need to manufacture a number of items to meet their unique requirements, Jenny maintains that it was "way too easy, seriously," saying that the only real problems were with the fuel pumps. Clive was also amazed at how easily everything came together.
Surely the factory transmission system is a concern, as it wasn't built to withstand 930 hp trying to twist it into bits. But RC had a solution, as Jenny explains. "We swapped from the standard GSR to RS running gear, although it was hard to locate the parts. The gearbox itself is fine. The only problems are when you repeatedly launch the car. After a couple of goes the standard RS diff just won't play ball. We have also added an Evo VII final drive, which gave us a higher top end for the car." There is apparently a dog-box on order for when they experiment with more power (Clive wants 1,000 on race fuel and 1,200 with methanol), but there are already concerns that even the uprated diff is going to be fighting a losing battle.
And what's it like to drive? "The cams pull it along at slower speeds, but it all breaks loose at about 5,000 rpm when the turbo kicks in [a fact confirmed by the vertical climb on the dyno grap] and it revs to 8,900 rpm. You can't half feel it when it kicks in, and the lag isn't as bad as we were anticipating because it spins up so quickly," Jenny admits. "When it's on the dyno it almost jumps out of the rollers when it comes on boost. The first time I went in the car the acceleration made me feel sick. It wheelspins in First, Second, and Third, and it's very noisy."
That noise is the exhaust exiting just ahead of the front wheel combined with a carbon-fiber hood. Although the car has been house-trained for daily use, it also has a wild side, which Clive is keen to exploit on the track at every opportunity.
However, the good news is that it stops as well as it goes. With the calipers alone costing $5,600, you'd expect it to. So far the car has had only one outing on the dragstrip, when it was throwing down 600 hp, and it ran the quarter-mile in 10.9 seconds. The car is currently geared for more than 200 mph and is expected to run in the high 9s on its next outing. The only restriction will be transferring that amount of power to the tarmac without shredding the running gear faster than Ricky can peel the banana. (Trust us, that's really fast.--Staff) That's where the traction control will have to earn its keep.
Now, you'd probably think that with a spec sheet as long as Ricky's banana, a car such as this is destined to remain as a company demo with no realistic commercial benefits. You'd be wrong. Having built this ultra Evo and retaining its reliability, just imagine what they could do for a customer's Evo with conservative power improvements so that it could survive daily abuse. And as if that weren't enough, they have already had two serious offers to buy the demo (sorry, it's not for sale) and another genuine inquiry from a customer who wants his Evo taken to a matching spec.
However, unless you are a lottery winner, I strongly urge you to think long and hard before reaching for the phone with similar intentions. Bear the following in mind: To convert your road-going Evo to match RC Developments', it would be asking in excess of $149,000. So sell the house and kids, and then reach for the phone.