The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, or colloquially known as the Evo is a high-performance sports car manufactured by Mitsubishi Motors that is based on the Lancer. There have been ten official versions to date, our subject review kit is the forth generation of the series. All EVO’s use two litre, turbocharged and four wheel drive systems. EVO’s were not officially imported into the American market until 2003; therefore this model represents the “home-market” version of this car,

The Kit

Our subject kit comes from Hasagawa imported by Hobbico and is part of their extensive line of the Lancer GSR series. All of the kit parts are crisply molded; since this is an EVO, there are additional standard Lancer parts included in the kit that would not nessarily be used but are available. The kit comes with a complete set of decals, window painting masks and mesh material for the front intercooler intake.

The Build

The body exhibited faint and easily removed mold lines, after clean up and since I like to paint the car body first, that is where this build started. The body was painted Tamiya’a TS-38 Gun Metal right out of the can, later after letting the body gas out, I polished it with The Final Detail carnuba wax. The kit includes a nice set of OXO wheels; since I wanted this model to reflect a “street racer” look I chose to strip the chrome wheels and then painted the wheels and mirrors Tamiya red.

The floor pan was painted with Tamiya Light Gun Metal for a little contrast. Next I set about painting the remaining drive-line and other mechanical parts while still on the trees with Tamiya Semi Gloss Black (SGB), Aluminum and other metallic shades. The interior tub and seats were painted Tamiya Earth, then masked and repainted with Tam SGB.

The window masks are similar to the ones that Tamiya packages with their kits, that is they are die-cut to fit a particular window, the kit included masks for the front, rear and side windows. There are no molded in lines on the clear window parts to assist in the placement of the masks. It took me a number of tries to line up the masks to my satisfaction. I burnished the masks down to the windows but I did get some seepage under the masks after shooting the windows with acrylic Tamiya SGB. I cleaned up the overspray with alcohol and then repainted the lines with a brush.

Conclusion

All in all, and very much like other Hasagawa kits I have built in the past, this kit goes together nicely and presents itself very well; it was a fun build.

Thanks to Hobbico for supplying this kit and to IPMS/USA for allowing me to review it for you.