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Old 06-16-2009, 10:42 AM
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Default Mitsubishi Super Stores Super Customer Appreciation Event!

Mitsubishi Super Stores held their largest ever get-together on Sunday, June 14th 2009. A Super Customer Appreciation Event that took place at the only facility large enough to accommodate an event of this magnitude, the airstrip at ex-El Toro Marine Base.

The event featured free raffle entries for everyone driving a Mitsubishi vehicle. Free food was available all day long including some much needed ice cream to cool the afternoon sizzle. Hooters girls were walking around posing with people and cars and generally just looking, well, hot!

You could drive your personal Lancer Evolution or Ralliart on the autocross course or watch a high-flying motocross demonstration or do both. With an estimated 650 or so Evolutions and Ralliart’s on hand you could spend all day just looking at the cars.

Mitsubishi Motors North America brought out two new Lancers for us to check out, sit in and salivate over, the new 2010 Lancer Ralliart Sportback and the 2010 Lancer Evolution MR with an available Touring Package. (Look for an upcoming story on EvolutionForums.com on the new Evo X MR Touring Package)

If that wasn’t enough you could window shop down vendor row to plan out your next performance mod. There was something for everyone at this event, the likes of which have never been seen before!

Two brand new 2009 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart’s were given away during the raffle as well as a host of other desirable and expensive prizes. Intercoolers, intercoolers pipe kit, intakes, exhaust systems, tires, etc. No one seemed to go home empty handed and tee-shirts and hats were also available for everyone.


The crazy raffle scene!

The scope of this event is without equal according the Irvine PD that was covering security for the event. The area covered the length of a football field and that was just the parking area for the cars and vendors.

The autocross course covered another football field plus length of the runway with a course that was tight, challenging and open enough in some areas to stretch the legs of your ride. You could also get some hot laps in one of three “tuner” Ralliart’s built specifically for this event.


The Orange Robispec Ralliart!

The Ralliart’s were built by three different tuners and with three completely different setups by Muellerized, Road Race Engineering and Robispec (listed alphabetically for political correctness).

All three Ralliart’s had very mild modifications. Mild as in no coilovers, just coil spring replacement. All three were on the stock all-season tires and some very mild engine mods were included on two of the three cars.

The engine mods consisted of custom tunes and some hard parts but neither of the two tuned RA’s was making more power than a stock Evo X. The Muellerized Ralliart was running with the stock 237 horsepower engine.

Two of them were on stock brakes; the Robispec RA had a Robispec brake kit. All of the laps run in the Ralliart’s were with passengers except for one (which we didn’t count).

All three of the Ralliart’s were simply a blast to drive and well sorted. All three were able to get into the 51’s on the fairly high-speed course where more power would have helped. So who says a Ralliart can’t run with an Evo?

Five runs were made in each car and the Ralliart that was the quickest was only so by one half of a second over the other two, so really there are no winners or losers here.

All three RA’s had excellent balance as you would expect from these three companies that specialize in setting up these cars, but we did note some differences.


The White Road Race Engineering Ralliart!

The Road Race Engineering car had the best power delivery. According to Mike from RRE, it had about 40 or so more hp than stock but still less than an Evo X. The Robispec RA had the best turn-in and felt more like an Evolution with its instant mind-meld reaction to steering input and more tossable nature. The Mueller car ran right in between the two (time-wise) and was nicely set-up with great balance. We can only image if it had had more power!

All three were brilliant to drive and faster than 99% of the Evos at this event even though 99% of them had more power…a lot more power! More likely than not the Evos also had better suspensions (read coilovers, not set-ups) and certainly better tires.


The Orange Muellerized Ralliart!

Thanks to Muellerized, Road Race Engineering and Robispec for building some kick ass, mildly tuned Ralliart’s. And of course thanks to Abbas Ahmadi and his Mitsubishi Super Stores for giving us the opportunity to test all three Ralliart’s. Overall a huge thank you for a truely outstanding event that will be hard to compete against!

Thanks to my friends at MMNA for supplying the photos.
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Old 07-03-2009, 10:28 AM
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Who won the 2 Ralliarts??? Did anybody win the two ralliart at all?
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Old 07-04-2009, 07:26 AM
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Yes, the 2 Ralliarts were won by someone. One guy had a Ralliart and moved into an Evo, the other kept his Ralliart. So we have one new owner from the event!
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