2009 Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart

When you're not 21 years old anymore, car-picking decisions become a lot less simple than they used to be. At 21, the ideal variant of, say Mitsubishi's Lancer line-up, would have been as obvious as lacing your Vans skateboard shoes: an Evo. Duh. But at 51 (or 31, if you mature at a more normal rate), the reflection in the mirror looks more and more like Goldilocks while you're shaving that thick stubble in the morning.

Meaning, one of these days you'll be dumbstruck by the Goldilocks revelation. The razor drops: "Hey," you say to yourself, "maybe the fastest Lancer really isn't the best one for me." Your head's spinning now; you have to hold onto the edge of the sink. "Maybe there's one with a little less horsepower than my Evo, but won't cause me to walk like George Burns and still be stone deaf 15 minutes after climbing out of it. And gee, maybe I'll even get that promotion I've been waiting 30 years for if I don't show up in the company parking lot in a car with a gigantic wing on the back. Maybe there's one that's...that's...just right."

Older, wiser you, meet the new 2009 Lancer Ralliart.

What's a Lancer Ralliart? Know it by its enemies: What's directly in the Ralliart's crosshairs are sedan specimens like Subaru's Impreza WRX, Volkswagen's R32, and the frisky Mazdaspeed3. Three big-caliber cars in the bang-for-buck arms race. Well, WRX, R32, Mazdaspeed3, get ready to make some room at the table.

At present, the Lancer line-up consists of the DE (base price, $14,615), the ES (starting at $16,715), the GTS ($18,215), and, of course, the two killer-diller Evos (at $33,615 for the GSR and $38,915 for the MR). That nice, yawning, $15,400 gap between the GTS and the Evos price is exactly where the Ralliart comes in.

At a price we'd guess to be in the high 20s, the Ralliart employs the GTS's laudable basic foundation that includes conventional-width front and rear tracks, foldable rear seats with long-stuff pass-through capability (no chassis stiffeners blocking it), the battery up front logically near the engine, plus a strut-tower stiffener, a newly cast link in the rear suspension, and the EVO's aluminum hood. What's left out are a bunch of extra welds, all the EVO's fancy aluminum suspension bits, its silly-grippy 245/40-18 tires (215/45 summer-spec 18s instead), and that gigantic wing that's been limiting your career. Things you might notice in the middle of Willow Spring's Turn Nine, but welcome on the way to work.

However, powering the Ralliart is a modestly defanged (say, one incisor) version of the Evo's mill. Using the same block, but with a 6500-rpm redline (instead of 7K), a single-scroll turbocharger (instead of the twin-jobber), a smaller intercooler and its own intake tract, the Ralliart delivers 237 hp at 6000 rpm, 54 less than the Evo's 291 hp at 6500 rpm. The torque numbers are similarly belt-tightened (253 lb-ft from 300), but the drop in peak rpm is interesting, going from 4400 revs to 3000. That's a more useful reduction. Particularly given that the Ralliart is about 130 pounds lighter than an Evo with a corresponding transmission.