NOPI Mitsubishi Evo VIII - On the Third Day

WIN THIS EVO

Almost every culture has its own creation myth: The Chinese believed that we all developed as parasites on the unfathomably huge body of the creator, while Democrats believe that we all evolved from monkeys. Good ol' Nippon, birthplace of Mitsubishis, drifting and vending machines full of schoolgirls' gently-used underpants, has a suitably naughty creation myth: the god Izanagi dipped his enormous jewel-encrusted spear into his wife Izanami's ocean and when he pulled it back out, the salty droplets falling back into the water coalesced and become the first island of Japan.

Dirty.

We Americans, on the other hand, never really got around to putting together our own story about how the world was created. Too busy shootin' bison, maybe. But while we may not have come up with one of our own, we still appreciate a good story, especially if it's about building something. Witness some of our best and most lasting cultural contributions: the A-Team turning a gas station into a flame-throwing fortress or a dune buggy into a helicopter, or MacGyver making a hand grenade out of a tampon.

So we haven't settled on just one creation myth that's 100-percent red-blooded, Mustang-and- poontang, Hooters-and-cooters American, but Super Street is here to suggest a new candidate. While the story behind the Evo VIII on these pages might not ever make it into a holy book or onto late-night AM radio, that doesn't mean that World Racing and NOPI's effort in building the beast was anything short of legendary.

To help promote the new Yahoo! auto enthusiasts' portal, the NOPI guys hired two teams of tuners and put a herculean task ahead of them: build up an '05 Mitsubishi Evo VIII to make Samson-like power to compete in a dyno shootout and late-night drag run down the Vegas strip.

Oh yeah, and do it in three days.