2009 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart First Steer
October 24, 2008 by David Twomey
2009 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart First Steer
The hot hatch market has pretty much been a two horse race to date, Volkswagen’s iconic GTi or Subaru’s WRX – but enter the tough new kid on the block, the Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart, and that’s all changed.
- David Twomey
Now before everyone starts yelling, I know there are a lot of other players in this field, and we all have our favourites, but the fact is the GTi sells about 200 units a month and the WRX, about 150, so that puts them well in front of the pack in the popularity stakes.
Mitsubishi’s product planning guy, and the man responsible for getting its product to market, is Chris Maxted and he’s very confident the new Lancer Ralliart Sportback and Sedan will sell at least 150 a month, with supply constrained by the availability of the sensational dual clutch, SST gearbox.
So that put the Lancer Ralliart right up there with the main players and grabbing for glory so how good is this new kid on the block.
Well, after several hours driving it around a variety of twisty roads in New South Wales today we can say that it is very, very good indeed.
Mr Maxted did tell CarAdvice that the Lancer Ralliart is for “EVO wannabes” and by that he wasn’t trying to denigrate his own buyers, more put them in context.
You see, the Lancer Ralliart is just the car for the person who might want the thrill of an EVO X but either doesn’t want to drive something that hard edged or cannot justify the $60,000+ spend.
Fall into either of those categories and the Lancer Ralliart is probably for you.
Fasthonda a Civic Type-R couldn’t touch a Ralliart on the track.
Big deal, the Honda F1 team can make an engine, like all the other teams. Which, you might have noticed, has no correlation to what the company does in its road cars.
If you want to boast about engines how about the 4G63 out of the FQ400: 200bhp per L in a road car, not a race car.
Nissan aren’t using the VR36DETT because they’ve not tested it properly, it’s too new. In racing, you need a reliable well tested engine that you know the characteristics of. Thus they’re using a V8 from the old JGTCC car. The VR will get used in racing, but not yet.
Oh yeah, favourtie quote: “There’s no such thing as VTEC at 6,000 RPM.”
David Twomey Says:
October 26th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Jaxen Says:
October 25th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
“The Ralliart can hit 100km/h in 7.1″
source GoAuto’s “First Steer”
This actually agrees almost exactly with the report in the Evo magazine (Aug 2008?). I think I remember that the DSG is slow to get off the line, was one of the main complaints. Possibly rolling times will be a bit better, but if the weight is similar to an evo X, then that’d be a fail too.
Unfortunately it’s already at least a full second behind the WRX in the 0-100, and will only get further behind when the upgraded WRX arrives. And it’s struggling to keep up with a GTI. (I know 0-100 is only one performance benchmark, but it so often places cars roughly where there overall performance potential lies).
Luckily for the three diamond brand performance is only part of the buying criteria for most ppl. And as you can see from some of the above, there’s always people willing to operate from ignorance of the facts :-P Unfortunately this 40k segment is getting a lot of good cars nowadays, if the Ralliart can’t offer top of the pack performance, then I’m not sure on what basis it’s going to sell? Being newest to the market is only going to last a few months…
I wait for the full review with interest, and so do my dollars…
GTRmon :-
You commented on Honda’s F1 effort a company set up by a brillant engineer and visionary Soichiro Honda,who believed that racing should be “In the blood” of the Company.Do you think your ignorant ramblings are somehow going to diminish or taint the company’s rich racing history-absolutely not!Infact it brings to light how other Japanese companies are found wanting regarding their racing heritage and most importantly racing “heart”.
You mentioned the that there is no correlation to what the company does to it’s road cars.There cannot be a direct correlation but some things regarding engineering(including aero) and materials do make it to road cars.Obviously you can’t have a road car revving to 19,000 rpm!The old NSX was an engineering marvel,the upcoming “NSX” V10 I’m sure will have some F1 tech.
You gave me an example of a powerful Mitsubishi engine which makes 200 hp per litre-powerful -yes! impressed –no,far from it!The now old S2000 has 88Kw from it’s NA 2.0L,same with the Mugen Civic Type R.You have a giant “hairdryer” attached to the engine and it’s a spectacular piece of engineering!?!Honda is well aware of the power of turbos-they use to race them in F1- 1.6L pushing well over 1,000hp!.
Anyway when a company’s “hero” car is a piddly 4 cylinder turbo for the baseball cap wearing brigade-That company shows it’s true racing experience and heritage or lack of it!
I hope that the 2009 WRX kicks the Ralliart’s ugly butt face!
I get the feeling Fasthonda reads a hell of a lot of Honda brochures in his/her spare time…
i think so too he sounds a bit cut .. maybe it’s that time of the month for him..
If Fasthonda is a muslim he would’ve gone jihad on the ralliart by now…martyr for honda movemement lol. In my opinion critiques I reckon is okay but I just can’t get my head around people like fasthonda among others forcing their view so as to expect people to adopt them into their own. We should wait until the real review come out before actually “guessing” what the performance would be for this car…set aside the chopping board for now.
Not bad, but save your coin and go for the hottest hatch on the market -AUDI S3! Now that’s a great car, performance, quality, and style.
My wife just bought one of these today Black sedan sunroof bonnet protection, headlights mats etc.
Tho neither of us have spent a great deal of time in it as yet, we bought this from a slightly different perspective then most posters above. Looks was ofcourse a concern, but safety was primary, 5 star ancap, 4wd we couldnt find a better car, wrx was to much a hero car, liberty was nice also, turbo lag is noticeable if your a rev head and need instant bang, but it begins to pull around 2500-2600rpm and has a nice even arc of power thru the rpm’s which makes it nice for everyday driving, we have had it down too 8.2L/100km driving normally despite website claiming 9.2l/100 or whatever it is, head room is awesome, im 6.5 in the back my head is on the roof tho, back is very comfy besides being a large adult, we quickly took it too 140kmh and jump on the brakes hard and it pulls up like no car we have owned before and straight, road noice is acceptable. I love the direction this car is going, it can be very much a mum and dad car, with the ability to over take 2 trucks in the limited overtaking breaks on most roads and the brakes to slot back in if you miscalculate with out pooping your pants.
How many of you guys have driven the Ralliart or a WRX for that matter? Too many desktop critics don’t have a clue.
I have an 09 WRX an my wife has a 09 Ralliart I have changed the tune,exhaust and the tyres on the Ralliart and it beats the WRX 0-100 every time. Both cars are beautiful machines and there isn’t much between them .
The twin clutch on the Mitsi is fantastic to drive best of both worlds .
If you dont like the ralliart and you havn’t driven one shut the F… up until you have!!!!
I must agree with that. I’ve been a perennial skeptic with regard to robotised manual gearboxes and took one of these for a drive last weekend…. and was thoroughly impressed. That TC-SST gearbox is surprisingly good! After driving something like Alfa’s silly-speed, this has a remarkably good level of response, and even in self shifting mode was considerably smoother than I would have expected.
My only worry is that the stock tyres are the same rubbish Yokohama Advan 10s that the MY08 WRX had as standard.. and they were awful. As well as that, the car weighs about 1555kg which isn’t exactly a featherweight in this crowd. The exhaust could certainly sound a bit nicer too, and the stereo wasn’t particularly remarkable, but I didn’t get to sample the Rockford Fosgate upgraded version.