Project Motovicity Evo 8 - Phase 1
Kicking off our collab build and shaking it down at the 2019 Never Lift half-mile competition
Never let it be said that Super Street is averse to a good pitch. For years, we've been very fortunate to have Motovicity Distribution as supporters of what we do, and not long ago they ran this up the flagpole: what if we modified a street car to run both a top-speed half mile and a Time-Attack? Maybe do it in phases to illustrate how something like this can escalate, and of course the clincher was Motovicity being able to both accommodate our parts wish list AND provide opportunities to flex those parts.
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It was our job to find the car and get it built, which turned out to be not as easy as you might think, in particular sourcing a platform. After the staff initially clashed repeatedly over which drive layout to go with (AWD! RWD! And then Rodrez with his FWD—pffft, whatever), we finally opted for four-corner power, but then the classic battle between WRX and Evo reared its ugly head in the office. The local used-car market ultimately led us down the path of the Mitsubishi product, but even then it was very slim pickings here in Southern Cali. Making matters a smidge more stressful was the looming deadline—our first test for this project would be Motovicity's Never Lift half-mile competition in April.
Motovicity x Super Street EVO 8 Build — Episode 1
With the calendar against us, we finally found ourselves a worthy candidate, an electric blue Lancer Evolution VIII, and proceeded to take it to project builder Gary Castillo over at Design Craft Fabrication. Gary has helped us on projects before, and his shop is renowned for working with Formula DRIFT programs for champ Daigo Saito, Robbie Nishida, and others (here's something you also may not know about Gary—he used to be an editor forImport Tunermagazine). We tasked Gary with doing most of the heavy lifting on this program, and with time limited to start we decided to opt for a bevy of simple-ish bolt-on upgrades in anticipation of this car's top-speed debut, all of which came from Motovicity.
