Think tuned Mitsubishi Evo and chances are the car you picture is a caged up rally weapon. Rich Colbeck’s Liquid Yellow Evo VIII takes those preconceptions and kicks them to the curb!
It’s funny what immediately draws your eye when you first spot a certain car. Often what you opt to focus on says a lot about what you find most interesting about cars in general – and perhaps, more often than not, your preconceptions as to what a specific car should and shouldn’t have done to it.
This Evo VIII you see here is a fine example. Built by Rich Colbeck (we’ll get to that in a moment), there are almost certainly two things about it that catch your eye: the lack of the trademark rear wing, and the colour – Renault Liquid Yellow.
“I’d always wanted an Evo and always fancied painting a car in that colour, so introducing the two made a lot of sense,” recalls Rich. “I finally got the cash together and bought the car from a friend. Back then it was still yellow, just an OE coat of 50 shades of yellow!”
Clearly not one to hang around when it comes to modifying cars, Rich pretty much dived right in with the bodywork tweaks you see here, starting with lashings of genuine carbon fibre. Rich readily admits that he got a tad carried away here, with his first purchase, the bonnet, swiftly leading to both front wings, the front splitter, and to visually balance things out somewhat, the boot. The ironic thing is that as Rich’s Evo is a GSR, a model sold with lightweight aluminium front panels from the factory, the carbon fibre components actually weighed fractionally more than the ones they replaced!
Rich’s desire to run the Evo as close to the ground as possible, something that doesn’t sit especially well with the vocal Evo community by the way, also forced him to cut away the inner section of his new carbon front wings, then roll the rear arches. It’s a move that must have been fairly galling at the time, yet it’s one that has allowed him to nail the sump-bothering stance his car now boasts, one of its defining traits and one which certainly sets it apart from the massed ranks of more modestly lowered Evos at shows…
Want to know more? Check out the full feature on Rich’s awesome Evo VIII in Fast Car magazine issue 378 on sale now in all good shops or alternatively download Fast Car magazine 378 now.
