The Evo has landed

Our first new car, six miles on the clock:

Funnily enough another customer was picking up his brand new GSR at the same time (the one to the left), same color. We had to look closely to figure out which one was ours.

After crossing the Central Valley in CA (booooooooooooooring), the scenery turned a little nicer:

Yeah, we definitely took the scenic route home. Better than trying to break in an engine on I-80:

Oh, and road trips in 100F+ heat aren't that great, even with a/c that works rather well.

Cool car... but the backdrop in that last pic really steals the scene

And this wasn't the prettiest spot on that route (Ebbetts Pass, CA SR4) either. Just a convenient one to pull over.

Nice, I liked driving 4 in the mercedes but the car felt like it was out of gas over the pass. The drive down the backside of the pass is a great drive into markleyville. That is like 20 miles downhill I thought would be fun on a bicycle.

Cool car and good luck with it!

Congrats!

Nice!

I can't wait to hear your feedback on the car Tim. Did you end up getting an MR or GSR?

It's an MR. The idea being that my wife - who doesn't want to learn how to drive a car with a manual transmission - can drive it if necessary. That allows us to substantially reduce the fleet because we don't need another backup car for her, which means I hopefully have time to wrench on the track Miata rather than trying to keep a bunch of DDs alive.

So far I must say I'm seriously impressed with the transmission. It seemed to work like a normal automatic trans when we were crossing the Central Valley, but once we got into the foothills it seemed to detect what was going on and suddenly you'd get downshifts when going downhill (and uphill, obviously) and going down Ebbetts Pass, it held the car in the appropriate low gear.

Heck, I was expecting Clippy to pop up on the nav screen going "It appears you are going downhill, can I help with that?".

I have always had Subies but very cool car. I could see owning one some day.

We've had it for a month now and put about 800 miles on it. Yeah, I know, but it's motorcycling season out here and I'm mostly using the bikes.

I'm still seriously impressed by the car. While the running in period is now over and I'm getting a little more frisky with the loud pedal it's pretty obvious that I'm not going to get anywhere near the capabilities of the car on a public road. At least not without risking my license. This thing is seriously quick and to make it worse, in regular road driving it makes it all look so effortless that I seriously have to watch the speedo.

Gripes are minor, it's got the full-on navigation/Sirius XM/iPod/whatever audio system and I could've done without that (but the wife wanted this specific car and that's what it came with) and the iPod integration is a little annoying. Devices with a lot of podcasts and music tend to take forever to recognise (I can make the whole drive to work - approx 45 minutes - with my full 60GB iPod plugged in and it will not have recognised it, whereas it recognises my iPhone with only about 300 titles within a few seconds) and I still haven't got it to play music in the correct album track order.

There are also a few minor rattles so I'll see if the dealer can take care of them when I bring the car in for its first service.

Once it's out of warranty and paid off, it might see the track from time to time .

Oh, and we had paint protection film fitted to the front, with all the crap on the road it was fairly obvious that that was necessary. Otherwise it's still bone stock and will remain so until the powertrain warranty has expired.

Evos are seriously way too easy to go ridiculously fast in. A friend was just telling me that he once drove his friend's modded Evo X home on a desolate highway one night with the car's owner drunk in the passenger seat and encouraging him to punch it, and didn't have a clue he was going well over 150 until he looked down at the speedo.

Very Very Nice! But, that front license plate mount needs to go

Max_Archer wrote: Evos are seriously way too easy to go ridiculously fast in. A friend was just telling me that he once drove his friend's modded Evo X home on a desolate highway one night with the car's owner drunk in the passenger seat and encouraging him to punch it, and didn't have a clue he was going well over 150 until he looked down at the speedo.

That feels familiar. The classic one is that I pull away from the lights in a gingerly fashion, look in the rear view mirror and start wondering where everybody went. They're usually a lot further behind me than when I'm in the Miata and also shift at 3k .

Aeromoto wrote: Very Very Nice! But, that front license plate mount needs to go

The annoying thing is that due to the way it is mounted to the bumper, taking it off will leave three rubber rivnut nipples sticking out of the bumper. That doesn't look much better, either.

Taking off the license plate frames when I stuck my NV plates on makes it a little better, but the paint protection film guys also went "what is it with that front plate mount?".

Don't know how I missed this thread the first time around, color is great!

I REALLY REALLY wanted one of these before I bought the Mustang last year, but the only dealers are 2 hours away from house in opposite directions. That just wasn't going to work for me.

I've read on the forums the trick to keeping the trans healthy with spirited use is getting 1-2 oil changes in the first 10k miles. And if you want to track it later, an additional cooler is a must.

The closest dealer is three hours away, the dealer we bought it from are five hours away.

However, our local SCCA go-to shop is already looking after a few Evo Xs, mine is just the first MR.

I know about the additional trans cooler for track use and I'll probably have the gearbox fluid changed early. At the moment it's a pure street car so I figured I'll get a trans fluid change done at the second oil change to be on the safe side.

Good idea!

Just from my own experience, I want a dealer close by of my 3 new cars I've owned over the last few years, all went into the dealership at least twice in the first 7-8 months of ownership.

'10 Speed 3, it was bone stock but kept throwing misfire codes.
'11 Frontier Pro-4X, wouldn't come out of 4wd on a couple of occasions.
'13 Mustang GT, went in 3 times in the first 1200 miles because they couldn't get the diff to stop leaking.

I can't afford to take 1+ days of vacation to handle stuff like this.

Hopefully you will have better luck than me!

Congrats!!!

Time for an update, methinks.

It's time for the first (free) service now - I can't believe I've put less than 3k on it until now.

We just changed over the tires over to snow tires and I finally had the alignment sorted out which feels like it transformed the car. Oh, and the snow tires are quieter than the OEM tires. I think I'll look at different tires when the OEM summer tires are worn out.

In daily putt-putting about I get close to 30mpg which was a bit of a surprise. I also discovered (well, finally was willing to try) "sport mode" on the transmission. Leads to huge grins but if I don't watch it, also big speeding tickets.

Overall I'm still really happy with the car. So far, it just works .

I can't see the pics because my works blocks them but i've been considering trading in my Subaru for an Evo. I want one.

Beautiful

Cool, I am in a similar boat with a wife who doesnt drive manuals. Looking to get a car in the next year for winter driving, maybe some rallycross fun. Any idea how well these things deal with salt and snow in terms of corrosion?

BoxheadTim wrote: In daily putt-putting about I get close to 30mpg which was a bit of a surprise.

You're killing me. Before giving the WRX up for a Leaf, I was getting 17-18 around town, and as high as 26 on road trips, at a sedate cruise...

turtl631 wrote: Cool, I am in a similar boat with a wife who doesnt drive manuals. Looking to get a car in the next year for winter driving, maybe some rallycross fun. Any idea how well these things deal with salt and snow in terms of corrosion?

No idea, they don't throw salt on the roads out here, just ash or similar stuff. And gravel, so I had to spring for some paint protection film.

One of the guys at the last PDX out here as a slightly older MR that's been through a winter or two and that still looked pretty pristine from what I could see.

ransom wrote:

BoxheadTim wrote: In daily putt-putting about I get close to 30mpg which was a bit of a surprise.

You're killing me. Before giving the WRX up for a Leaf, I was getting 17-18 around town, and as high as 26 on road trips, at a sedate cruise...

Keep in mind that my commute only is about 5-8 miles of town driving, the rest is open road with not a lot of traffic and 50mph limits.

But even driving at normal speeds on I-80 through the mountains I seem to be getting 28-29 mpg. On the back roads through the mountains, not so much.

I haven't updated the thread in a while, simply because there isn't much to report.

It's a great car in snow, a fact driven home by watching a bunch of other cars including WRXs pirouette off the road Saturday night on I-80 over Donner Pass. With good snow tires, there seems to be a ton of grip available even on snow.

Fuel consumption is still in the upper twenties, so no change there.

Smiles per mile are also still in the same range, it's a ton of fun to drive, especially when the roads around you aren't all straight.

The only annoyance I have with the car is the radio, it came with their top-of-the-line Rockford Fosgate system with built-in Navigation and that one doesn't play well with iPhones (even though it's supposed to be able to drive one via USB) and also has trouble with iDevices with large amount of audio on it. Nothing new about that as there are a ton of people out there mentioning that on the Internet; my suggestion if you are thinking about buying one is to order it with the base audio system and put a better one in yourself. Which is what I would've done if my wife hadn't spotted this car on the dealer's lot and decided it was "the one".

BoxheadTim wrote: It's an MR. The idea being that my wife - who doesn't want to learn how to drive a car with a manual transmission - can drive it if necessary.

Mrs. Maroon didn't know how to drive a manual either, until I bought an Audi S6, and she wanted to drive it...