Infuriatingly, none of the Lancer Evolutions in Gran Turismo 7 have their pièce de résistance, their Active Yaw Controller, adjustable via any means in this game. Back in Gran Turismo Sport, the default AYC setting puts the trick system at its mildest setting, making it barely noticeable, which seems to be the case in GT7 as well. A Lan Evo without AYC feels almost like Burger King without their burgers, Disneyland without Mickey, or Monza without the oval. Is there anything left to it that other cars don't have or can't do better?
Produced for just about a year from January 1998 to January 1999, the Evo V will certainly be argued by many to be among the best of its prestigious litter of monster machines born and bred to tango in the fires of competition. While that sounds like typical marketing talk from a car manufacturer, perhaps no other car embodies that philosophy better than the Lan Evo and Imp STis; with their rivalry on the rally stages reaching their zenith in the late nineties, both companies had to produce largely similar road going versions of the cars they wished to field in battle. In other words, where other cars are produced and sold to make money first and foremost, the Evo V was put in showrooms just so Mitsubishi can beat Subaru black and blue and make them see stars.
And it shows, doesn't it? While the cessation of Group A homologation needs made most later Evos look more and more like their base Lancer counterparts, there is no mistaking the Evo V whatsoever for the base model Lancer, with its fenders flared wide enough to be the star of its own robot wars manga, not to mention that towering adjustable wing, glaring fog lights, and, of course, AYC. Slip into the factory Recaros of an Evo V, and you might get more rally car than you could've ever reasonably expected from a road car.
Try to drive this thing normally, and you'll find nothing but understeer that pushes harder than the healthy 414.6N⋅m (305.8lbf⋅ft) of the turbocharged 4G63 engine in the front of the car. That is not to say however, that the Evo doesn't want to turn; you just have to know how to make it turn, and that's done with the pedals almost as much as the steering wheel itself. Don't worry, the car will teach you how it wants to be driven... whether you want to learn or not. Full braking in this thankfully ABS equipped car is almost like mistakenly jumping into a competition pool as a kid who can't swim; you keep expecting the front end to stop sinking at any moment, but the front springs feel like a bottomless spiral that can absorb any amount of weight you want to put over them, and every gram of weight you sink into them means one gram of stability less over the rears, making the front engined, all wheel drive Evo V almost as eager to be provoked into a slide as an air–cooled 911. From there, drop as many cogs as need be on the ultra close ratio five speed manual gearbox to keep the rather peaky turbo 4 cylinder happy, and then unleash all of its 306HP (228kW) to keep all four wheels spinning and smoking to carry the car through to the exit of the turn. That is to say, this is a car that only wants to turn when it loses its grip on the road, which is when it becomes much more controllable than when it was stuck onto the road. This thing was set up to go sideways, even on paved asphalt. The moment you let up on being a boor and let the car regain its grip, it's right back to understeer city!
But of course, conventional wisdom would tell anyone willing to listen that grip driving is undoubtedly faster than drifting, and that holds doubly true for a wide, paved racetrack with an abundance of grip and width. With springs that soft and endlessly weight absorbent, the Evo V asks of its driver more commitment than most marriage vows when braking for a corner on a racetrack—under trail braking, mid corner steering corrections in this car will quickly unsettle the very softly sprung car, sending it into a snappy fishtailing session that only death can put an end to, and so you as the partner of the Evo have to pick a line, pick it precisely, and then stick with it in sickness and health, even if it leads you to cleanly and embarrassingly missing an apex, or face first into the inside barrier. Smoothly guiding the hypersensitive and eagerly upset car to gradually carve a precise line towards a deep apex is almost like trying to keep your kid from learning swear words or trying to keep clean a daily driver; it's only a matter of time before you give up and let nature take its course, and instead of feeling bad about it, there's just a sense of relief washing over you as you realise you were fighting the inevitable, and you just do your best to cope with whatever comes next.
Rather, in spite of what its hulked up specs might suggest, the Evo V is much better suited for slower, tighter tracks, like Gymkhanas and Touges. The power isn't there to make the car go ultra fast in a straight line; this thing suffocates past 175km/h (109mph) where fourth gear wanes off. The entire drivetrain is set up the way it is to ensure that you can break grip on all 4 of its Comfort Soft tyres with a boot full of throttle. You aren't supposed to carefully trail brake it into an apex on a racetrack, you're supposed to just give it full brake, full steering lock into a tight turn, let the car slide, and then full throttle with full turbo boost to keep that slide going. It's an all or nothing car, one that gives up on you the moment you doubt it and hesitate, or fail to internalise its tendencies and harmonise with its very specific driving style. But, while I was fighting and experimenting endlessly during both weekly sessions simply trying to find something that will satiate the Evo and coax some speed out of it, the car effortlessly clicked so intensely at the narrow and bumpy Nordschleife that I suddenly could drive the Evo almost without thinking about anything at all, and simply let instinct take over. Oh, what's that? You want to break out your rear? Yeah, sure, whatever, the track goes over there anyway. Hey, uh... there was a pretty nasty bump and rumble strip back there, wasn't there? You sure didn't tell me much about it, or cared that much. Eh, if you don't care, why should I? Just do your thing.
I have to admit, I'm no rally driver, even within the make believe realm of Gran Turismo. I've tried to carefully nurse it around a racetrack with conventional knowledge, and I've tried sliding it around like a hooligan, and yet I can't keep up with any of my peers in our weekly meets. Rick and Vic were steadily gapping me at Streets of Willow even as they fought among themselves, and RX8 smoked me around GVS in a 1v1 race by about a second per lap. There's just something about this car that I don't get, and so you should probably take my opinion this week with even more salt than usual. For what it's worth, though, I did thoroughly enjoy my time with the Evo V this week, especially when I wasn't chasing numbers or competitors.
Seeing 1998 through my jaded 2023 spectacles, I can't help but to admire how... stupid, the Evo V is, in an absurdly good way. It's raw, involving, unadulterated, and unapologetic. Using 2023 logic, if a car manufacturer wanted to sell a car using racing pedigree as a marketing angle, they'd make the car look more racecar than the actual racecar, only to hold it back with all the vehemence of a thousand nannies that no racing series would possibly allow, and then bake impossible to overcome understeer into the suspension just to seal their asses against lawsuits. Not so with the Evo V. Not with any Evo. The car not only looked like a rally car, it drove like a rally car, to my limited knowledge of them, and it serves as a powerful reminder to be careful what you wish for. I can't help but to imagine some rich poser kid buying one of these cars to show off if it were on sale in the modern day, only to fully depress the brake pedal while yanking the steering wheel hard to one side in a panic situation, almost certainly resulting in a bigger crash. Cars simply aren't built like that anymore, and I think that's a crying shame. While I can't master it, I came away from this week with a deep humbling and even deeper respect the Evos of this time period. I daresay of all the beloved 90s darlings that came from Japan in that deeply magical era, nothing else feels as legitimate and in your face as an Evo or an Imp, and there's just such a rowdy, unobtanium charm to that.
And all that is even before we get to tweaking the adjustable AYC on these cars.
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