BCDSM shalt be thy witness.
It all started fine and pretty and it worked routinely like clockwork - that's so cliche I shall scratch that and say it actually worked like a Camry - except with lots of power and 4WD for a few good merry months. Hong Kong was great but it is the open roads in BC where you can really unleash the kind of built-in shenanigan Mitsubishi had in mind when they first penned this thing.
Very classy very comfortable with very plush interior as you'd come to expect from cars manufactured during the "bubble period" of Japanese automobiles (circa 1988 - 1996). Complete with creature comfort and performance packaged in a way you can hardly match in its entirely in a car priced under 50K today. Telescopic and tilt steering adjustment, fully automatic climate control, factory remote door lock and power package, full leather interior, 9 way adjustable front seats (fore/aft/lumbar/cushion front/cushion rear/headrest up/down/fore/aft), just to name a few, are mated with an overly athletic 240bhp V6 twin turbo power plant. It is a gentleman's car, but with a distaste of the norm and the common. Its poise inspires confidence, but it also intimidates the driver by its sheer ability. "Push me harder," is what it is saying, as the distinct twin turbo sound whizzes up with your heel-toe downshift, when you crank the wheel it puts its face right up to your nose, closer than you are ever comfortable with, "see if you run out of guts first or I run out of grip first. I dare you, I double dare you".
You picture the line you want to ride on in this curve, it leans a bit and suddenly you feel that you are turning more than you intend to even at blazing speeds with the tires just screeching away. It does not handle like those scary oversteering types but the rear seems to have a mind of its own and crank in just a few minutes of a degree to turn the car into the corner just that much harder, there is certainly more slip angle than you would anticipate in a front wheel biased AWD car but at this whole time the car is talking to you. More precisely, you and your car are having a corner-long team cuddle-up talk. It has so many vital players in the chassis that you must inform each of them as to what you want to do in a split second and they must do it immediately to come out of the corner exit victorious. Now that feels like accomplishment to me.
Every day was a prefect day for motoring in this car, it braced snow and ice, wind and rain (FACT: I drove through strength #8 hurricane in Hong Kong in it, overtaking stalled BMWs, public buses and expensive metals that just crapped out from the massive rain and puddles) , it did not even flinch to the slippiest of surfaces. It is using all of Mitsubishi's bleeding-edge technology back then to carry its proud 11th owner exactly where he wanted to be exactly when he needed to be. Once in a while it likes to test your nerves a bit by throwing you into a wide oversteer - but then it would gracefully recover itself, as if it is laughing hysterically and, fingers pointing in your face, say "I gotcha there man! HAHAHA"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlBlbzVQh7sIt would do this if you brake and steer at the exactly right moment at the right amount, and come out of the corner as though nothing really happened, it would do this without ever spilling the tofu in the trunk.....Yes you can do this in dry pavement if you have balls of steel, the car will do it as if this was what it was designed to do.
There is something I just can't put MY finger at but you don't so much pilot the car as you are there to interrogate its ability. And its personality is so complex, that I feel like I am in the interrogation room with the Joker here: You'll never expect its next move. Yet that is what makes the whole action of tricking it into doing things you want it to do - sometimes things it is not designed to do - so interesting. If a well sorted car is Tetris, the Galant VR-4 is Grand Theft Auto.
Disaster strikes hardest in the best of times.
Just days after I chatted with the local bodyshop about how I plan to do a "complete" to it to make it look as good as it drives, some Eastern Asian folk (oh fuck this isn't a political forum - some fucking Indians who lost their magic carpet) decided that they would make a left turn without making sure that no one is coming their way. I reacted with all my years of experience at the autoX and the track days - I had 3 choices, 1, run straight like what the driver's education says you should, risking to T-bone her vehicle at the passenger side door at 60km/h minus braking speed, 2 swerve around like a mad man, avoiding her car and wrap my car around the light pole on the other side of the intersection, or 3 swerve and stop very precisely so she T-bones me at maybe 10km/h and I come to a controlled stop at the farthest right lane just stopping beside the curb. I did what I did and we all managed to walk out of this. I managed to stay in control with no small part thanks to the factory ABS system and the just renewed suspension components on the car that allowed the knife-sharp precision manuver to be realised with as little drama as possible.
Guess what? That other driver was an N and she was driving 2 of her friends - that is an INSTANT FAIL.
So ICBC is getting my car fixed. This thread is going to document how the epic repairs unfold.
