The end of an era? The Mitsu dude is 10 years too late. The EVO era ended with the last of the EVO 6 Tommi Makinen Edition aka EVO 6.5 after Tommi won the last WRC for Mitsu in 1999. Anything after that was just a joke. With the change in WRC rules, none of the EVOs manage to win any WRC since (at least Subaru managed one with the new age Ver 7 Bugeye).

The Lancer and Lancer Evolution are 2 separate platforms. They are stopping the Lancer Evolution, not the Lancer.

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Added on March 3, 2011, 11:00 amThat's because of the change in rules. Before year 2000 you have to produce the cars for sale before you can put it into WRC. Hence you have the Lancer Evolution and the Subaru Impreza STis. They have to make it and sell it before homologation for WRC can take place. Nobody else dared to challenge Mitsu and Subaru because they can't put a turbo in a small car and expect to sell it at that time.

After year 2000, you can just make 10 prototypes and enter WRC. Hence you get cars like Peugeot 206 turbo and Citroen Xsara/C4 turbo which you do not see on the road. Anyway, since the change of rules, there has only been 3 manufacturers that took the WRC title, Peugeot, Subaru and Citroen.

This post has been edited by sleepwalker: Mar 3 2011, 11:01 AM

Your relative at P2 might need to check the facts again. AFAIK, both the Lancer GT and Inspira has the same wheelbase, 2635mm whereas the Lancer EVO has a slightly smaller 2625mm wheelbase. I don't know how your relative says that the Inspira is smaller than the Lancer GT.

Anyway, size does not make the platform. It's what they do to the basic platform that makes it an Evolution. Additional reveting and spot-welds are usually found on EVO chassis that does not exist in the basic Lancer chassis. In order to get this done, you'd need a separate assembly platform to assemble the chassis. Of course you can do it Proton style like what they did the R3 by rolling out the standard GTi chassis to the back of the assembly plant and spot-weld it by hand. Don't think the Japs would do that to their EVOs.