Leave it to downtown Los Angeles to be both an interesting and unattractive place to shoot a car at any given time. Traffic is stopped on the 101 North, unfortunate homeless people are milling about, some freak is being videotaped while walking along a set of railroad tracks (in a homemade space suit for who knows what)-who needs a real scenic backdrop when you've got this? That's what makes downtown LA so great; drive anywhere else and what you get is a lot of suburbia or warehouse sectors,which is just colorless drab anyway. That's why we always head to skid row where we're guaranteed action.
And then KT So shows up.
As if it weren't bad enough trying to avoid stepping on dog doo every eight paces and being laughed at by passing carloads of high school delinquents, nothing turns it up a notch like having a slender, big breasted Asian girl on hand. The traffic really stops, the homeless swarm in for a closer look and suddenly the guy in the spacesuit isn't so interesting anymore. KT, like the car parked next to her, commands attention. It's just one of the many prerequisites needed to become a member of Team Hybrid (or the Hybrid Hunnyz). Jason MacGill may not have the bootaychigae that KT flosses, but his Evo MR is pretty bombay.
After pissing the wife off for having too much (or should we say "two" much?) of a good thing in the garage, what was originally just one half of a dynamic Evo duo (the other being an Evo 8 GSR) became this single show boat-Jason traded the GSR in for a BMW 330. Meanwhile, the MR was well on its way to becoming strictly a time attack competition car until a close call at a local event prompted him to go from race/street to a safer street/show. "The brake fluid boiled at 120mph on the back stretch of the California Speedway's infield course." Jason reports. "The car lost braking entirely and my driver, Jeff Rhodes, who competes in drifting events as well as road races, was able to pitch the car sideways, drift, shed some speed then navigate off course. If it wasn't for his skill, I'd have an Evo in the wall and a dead friend on my conscience. That's what pulled me out of the track circuit for a bit."
Fair enough.
To make the transition, the car needed to look more than just stock with all its hidden goodies under the hood. Jason sourced Voltex for a tougher-than-leather-looking body kit and a GTC300 rear wing to hang off the trunk. A call into 500whp.com and Cusco's Zero 2R coilovers were sent into lowering action so it wouldn't look like the Evo was offroading on the 17x8.5 Volk Racing CE28 wheels. From its previous life as a time attacker, the chassis already saw reinforcements in the form of Cusco's rear antisway bar, a titanium front strut bar, a carbon fiber rear trunk bar, a chromoly trunk brace and a six-point rollcage painted Takata Green to match the seat harnesses.
On the power tip, what this Evo's putting down is a conservative 342whp, street tuned by Jason himself on a Dynojet. The parts list is mild, but the 4G63 need not holler much at all for its gains. The cylinder head has been outfitted with a set of HKS 272/264 cams with adjustable timing gears for fine tuning, and the exhaust has been freed up with a Tomei downpipe and GReddy titanium exhaust. A Racing Suction intake from HKS pulls fresh air into the stock turbo, which is cooled through an R-Spec GReddy front mount intercooler. Tightening up the look under the hood are the ARC spark plug cover, exhaust manifold shield and radiator shroud. Further tuning is handled through an A'PEXi SAFC and a Turbo XS Tuner Pro with OBDII logger.
As the sun finally set, the traffic freed up and all the other marvelous characters that make up this story faded to black. Only one thing remained standing tall. An MR that had nearly eaten it, and had to be toned down to shine.