Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart Car Review

Facts At A Glance
Car: Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart
Prices: £21,649-£24,149 – on the road
Insurance Group: 17
Emissions: 243g/km
Performance: 0-60mph 7.1s / Top Speed 136mph
Fuel Consumption: (urban) 20.3mpg / (extra urban) 34.9mpg / (combined) 27.7mpg
Safety: ABS, twin front, side and knee airbags, ISOFIX child seat mountings
Dimensions: length/width/heightmm 4585/1760/1515

THE MISSING LINK

Our Rating: 7.7 / 10

In the Lancer Ralliart, Mitsubishi is offering Evo capability at hot hatch prices. Steve Walker reports

Evolution is a word that will be forever associated with the fastest versions of Mitsubishi’s Lancer but the link between today’s ordinary Lancer hatchback and its Evo X relative was never very clearly-defined. The Lancer Ralliart sets out to change all that with much of the technology and attitude found on the fearsome Evo at a more manageable price.

The North American Bigfoot, the Himalayan Yeti, Manchester’s Gallagher brothers; popular folklore is littered with myths and legends concerning the elusive ‘missing link’. The thought of surviving evidence that could fill the absent sections in the evolutionary chain between humans and apes has fired the imaginations of scientists, crackpots and the general public down the ages. Today, we’re no nearer a breakthrough but at least Mitsubishi’s theory of Evolution can offer us nailed-on proof of the connection between a civilised family hatchback and a high performance beast. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves: we give you the Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart.

That the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X is a bit of an animal is not in dispute. Packing up to 360bhp and a cutting edge all-wheel-drive transmission system to help it deploy that power, the snarling Evo is a car that one should approach with caution and poking it with a pointy stick is certainly not advisable. The common-or-garden Mitsubishi Lancer hatchback, however, is a much more sedate entity. You can just about make out the family resemblance between it and its distant cousin the Evo but with front wheel drive and only around 140bhp, the pair always looked a long way removed. That was until Mitsubishi announced the Lancer Ralliart.

Despite the two cars being founded on the same basic underpinnings and sharing numerous common parts, a gulf has always existed between the Mitsubishi Lancer and its Lancer Evolution relatives and it’s in that gulf that the Lancer Ralliart operates. The car has a healthy 240bhp available from the same basic four-cylinder turbocharged engine found in the Evo and while it can’t compete with the warp-speed acceleration of its bigger brother, a 136mph maximum velocity and 7.1s 0-60mph performance puts it in the same bracket as leading hot hatches like the Focus ST and the Renaultsport Megane. Crucially, the Lancer Ralliart also inherits the Evo’s all-wheel-drive system, although in

The Evo’s Active Yaw Control is a significant omission on the Lancer Ralliart and other than the raw power of the engines, the single most telling factor in making the car a less capable proposition than its wonderfully unhinged sibling. This system distributes optimum amounts of power between the Evo’s two rear wheels, helping it corner truer and grip more fiercely. Without it, the Ralliart is more tail happy on the limit. What the Ralliart does get is the excellent SST dual clutch gearbox that has gained rave reviews in the Evo for its slick paddle-controlled gearchanges. To most drivers, putting the power gap to one side, the experience at the wheel of the Ralliart will be all but indistinguishable to that in an Evo. The car displays the same lag-free pull off the line, albeit without quite the same vigour, and the fluidity of the suspension is also very much in evidence. The Ralliart lacks the Evo’s high end Brembo braking system but still stops with relative assurance.

The Lancer Ralliart is a five-door hatchback - or a ‘Sportback’, as Mitsubishi would have us refer to it. Tradition dictates that the Lancer Evo has always been and will only ever be offered as a saloon, so that’s another distinction between this ‘Evo lite’ derivative and the full fat, sugar rush of the real thing. Otherwise, the styling of the two cars has a lot in common. The same squinty headlights and bottom-heavy grille pervade the front end giving the car a suitably malevolent look as it approaches in your rear view mirror. The wheels are only 18" in diameter and aren’t crammed into the wheelarches in the same way as the Evo’s larger items while the skirts and spoilers are less extrovert.

A big draw on the latest Lancer is the improved interior quality. The plastics and design are still probably a notch below the best in this price bracket, but they’re no longer leagues off the pace as they were in the old model. The cowled instruments are a particularly nice touch. Space inside is better