Athens, Greece - You’re looking at what its maker claims is the world’s fastest Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, and if you restrict that definition to the pressure-cooker world of drag racing, the numbers are difficult to argue with.
Watch as this Evo by Extreme Tuners demolishes the standing quarter-mile (402 metres) in 7.902 seconds (the first Evo ever to break into the sevens) with a terminal velocitiy of 298.26km/h.
What it takes to do that, is a fully built engine with custom billet conrods on a carved-from-solid tungsten alloy steel crankshaft, destroked to reduce capacity from two litres to 1800cc, and running specially-made slipper pistons to give a 15.8:1 compression ratio.
The ported, skimmed and polished cylinder head has titanium valves in beryllium seats, with asymmetrical cams producing peak power at a screaming 13 000 revs, fed by a monstrous turbo - CNC-machined out of a solid block of aluminium - that looks big enough to swallow small children.
Extreme Tuners quotes an equally monstrous 1250kW (that’s 695kW per litre!), enough to totally overwhelm the car’s traction control and torque vectoring programmes (even with all-wheel drive), unpredictably breaking individual wheels loose momentarily and sending the car squirming all the way down the strip.
This video is as much a tribute to the bravery of its test driver as to the skill of its engineers. Respect.