The Road Car That Beat Purpose-Built Rally Cars
The Car Nerd
21,171 views
In 1974, a four-door Japanese family saloon entered the most destructive rally on Earth.
The East African Safari Rally covered roughly six thousand kilometres of flooded public roads, volcanic dust, mud, rocks and mechanical punishment. Porsche led—until its suspension collapsed. The car that came through to win was a Mitsubishi Lancer driven by Kenyan mechanic’s son Joginder Singh.
It was Mitsubishi’s first World Rally Championship victory.
Twenty-two years would pass before a Lancer won a world title. Mitsubishi spent most of that time building rally cars that were too hot, too heavy, too late—or simply the wrong shape entirely.
The result of those failures was the Lancer Evolution: a brutally effective road-going homologation special that transformed an ordinary commuter saloon into one of the most successful rally cars ever created.
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📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now! The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH
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🏁 IN THIS EPISODE
In this video, we uncover the extraordinary history of the Mitsubishi Lancer: how a lightweight family car conquered the brutal Safari Rally, disappeared from competition, returned with a series of deeply flawed machines—and eventually produced the Lancer Evolution that dominated the World Rally Championship.
What’s inside:
The Family Car That Survived the “Car Breaker”:
How Mitsubishi reinforced an ordinary 1.6-litre Lancer to survive six thousand kilometres of mud, rocks and flooded Kenyan roads—and defeated Porsche and Lancia in the 1974 Safari Rally.
Four Lancers, Four Finishers:
Why simply reaching the end of the Safari was considered an achievement, and how Mitsubishi returned in 1976 to finish first, second, third and sixth.
The Turbocharged Lancer That Cooked Itself:
How Mitsubishi created one of rallying’s first electronically controlled turbo engines—then discovered the car could not compete in hot countries without overheating.
The Group B Mitsubishi That Never Raced:
The story of the carbon-and-Kevlar Starion 4WD, its front-midship engine layout, experimental three-valve technology and the rule change that killed it before it entered a single World Championship rally.
The Galant That Was Too Big:
How the Galant VR-4 introduced the 4G63T engine, full-time four-wheel drive and hydraulic four-wheel steering—but remained too heavy and unwilling to rotate on tight stages.
Compressing a Galant Into a Lancer:
How Mitsubishi transferred the Galant’s complete turbocharged four-wheel-drive powertrain into a smaller saloon and accidentally created the first Lancer Evolution.
The Evolution That Couldn’t Handle:
Why the original Evo was ferociously fast but suffered from chassis flex, severe understeer and suspension geometry that changed in the middle of a corner.
Fixing the Evo One Version at a Time:
How wider tracks, revised suspension, larger tyres, improved aerodynamics and a huge rear wing transformed a flawed homologation special into a championship contender.
Why the 4G63 Was Built for the Rules:
How the engine’s long-stroke design produced enormous low-down torque exactly where the FIA’s restrictive turbo regulations hurt it least.
Tommi Mäkinen’s Four-Year Reign:
How Mäkinen won five of nine rallies in 1996, captured four consecutive drivers’ championships and turned the Lancer Evolution into a global performance icon.
A Production Car Against Prototypes:
Why Mitsubishi refused to abandon Group A regulations, continuing to build thousands of road-going Evolutions while its rivals raced purpose-built World Rally Cars.
The Championship Mitsubishi Never Repeated:
How Mäkinen and Richard Burns finally delivered Mitsubishi’s first—and only—manufacturers’ World Rally Championship in 1998.
The Rally Car That Ended the Winning:
Why Mitsubishi’s purpose-built Lancer Evolution WRC performed worse than the production-based car it replaced, scoring only three podiums and never winning a rally.
The Circle Back to Kenya:
How Mitsubishi’s final World Rally Championship victory came on the same event where its story began—won once by Joginder Singh in a carburetted family saloon, and again by Tommi Mäkinen in a Lancer Evolution.
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🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT
📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH
📺 Documentary channel: @thatjasonhassett
🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
#MitsubishiLancer #LancerEvolution #MitsubishiEvo #TommiMakinen #WorldRallyChampionship #WRC #RallyCars #AutomotiveHistory #CarNerd #Engineering #JoginderSingh #TheCarNerd
20 Comments
Mitsubishi is the most successful brand of Ecstasy tablet the world has ever seen.
While Andrew Cowan was developing Ralliart for WRC, they were also developing the dominant Pajero and its many evolutions in Dakar.
BTW!! .... we want a Pajero Evolution video next !! 🤔
Plenty of content to deep dive into, with the Pajero story. 👌🏻
Or maybe executive saloons in the 80. Or I dont know, something not rally-related maybe? Just for a change? :)
Both of mine are my forever cars.
The TME is an absolute riot to drive and thankfully I run out of talent waaaay before the car does when pushing it. Again, Very special car.
Noting the technical improvements was very fitting in this one for its namesake. Always enjoy the videos and happy to see one come up so near and dear
The Road Car That Beat Purpose-Built Rally Cars
The Car Nerd
21,171 views
In 1974, a four-door Japanese family saloon entered the most destructive rally on Earth.
The East African Safari Rally covered roughly six thousand kilometres of flooded public roads, volcanic dust, mud, rocks and mechanical punishment. Porsche led—until its suspension collapsed. The car that came through to win was a Mitsubishi Lancer driven by Kenyan mechanic’s son Joginder Singh.
It was Mitsubishi’s first World Rally Championship victory.
Twenty-two years would pass before a Lancer won a world title. Mitsubishi spent most of that time building rally cars that were too hot, too heavy, too late—or simply the wrong shape entirely.
The result of those failures was the Lancer Evolution: a brutally effective road-going homologation special that transformed an ordinary commuter saloon into one of the most successful rally cars ever created.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
📚 ORDER MY NEW BOOK "History Written by Losers" — out now! The true story of global power has been whitewashed by the victors and the fixers. This book tells the side of history they tried to bury. 👉 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🏁 IN THIS EPISODE
In this video, we uncover the extraordinary history of the Mitsubishi Lancer: how a lightweight family car conquered the brutal Safari Rally, disappeared from competition, returned with a series of deeply flawed machines—and eventually produced the Lancer Evolution that dominated the World Rally Championship.
What’s inside:
The Family Car That Survived the “Car Breaker”:
How Mitsubishi reinforced an ordinary 1.6-litre Lancer to survive six thousand kilometres of mud, rocks and flooded Kenyan roads—and defeated Porsche and Lancia in the 1974 Safari Rally.
Four Lancers, Four Finishers:
Why simply reaching the end of the Safari was considered an achievement, and how Mitsubishi returned in 1976 to finish first, second, third and sixth.
The Turbocharged Lancer That Cooked Itself:
How Mitsubishi created one of rallying’s first electronically controlled turbo engines—then discovered the car could not compete in hot countries without overheating.
The Group B Mitsubishi That Never Raced:
The story of the carbon-and-Kevlar Starion 4WD, its front-midship engine layout, experimental three-valve technology and the rule change that killed it before it entered a single World Championship rally.
The Galant That Was Too Big:
How the Galant VR-4 introduced the 4G63T engine, full-time four-wheel drive and hydraulic four-wheel steering—but remained too heavy and unwilling to rotate on tight stages.
Compressing a Galant Into a Lancer:
How Mitsubishi transferred the Galant’s complete turbocharged four-wheel-drive powertrain into a smaller saloon and accidentally created the first Lancer Evolution.
The Evolution That Couldn’t Handle:
Why the original Evo was ferociously fast but suffered from chassis flex, severe understeer and suspension geometry that changed in the middle of a corner.
Fixing the Evo One Version at a Time:
How wider tracks, revised suspension, larger tyres, improved aerodynamics and a huge rear wing transformed a flawed homologation special into a championship contender.
Why the 4G63 Was Built for the Rules:
How the engine’s long-stroke design produced enormous low-down torque exactly where the FIA’s restrictive turbo regulations hurt it least.
Tommi Mäkinen’s Four-Year Reign:
How Mäkinen won five of nine rallies in 1996, captured four consecutive drivers’ championships and turned the Lancer Evolution into a global performance icon.
A Production Car Against Prototypes:
Why Mitsubishi refused to abandon Group A regulations, continuing to build thousands of road-going Evolutions while its rivals raced purpose-built World Rally Cars.
The Championship Mitsubishi Never Repeated:
How Mäkinen and Richard Burns finally delivered Mitsubishi’s first—and only—manufacturers’ World Rally Championship in 1998.
The Rally Car That Ended the Winning:
Why Mitsubishi’s purpose-built Lancer Evolution WRC performed worse than the production-based car it replaced, scoring only three podiums and never winning a rally.
The Circle Back to Kenya:
How Mitsubishi’s final World Rally Championship victory came on the same event where its story began—won once by Joginder Singh in a carburetted family saloon, and again by Tommi Mäkinen in a Lancer Evolution.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔗 LINKS & SUPPORT
📚 The book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TKPBH
📺 Documentary channel: @thatjasonhassett
🔔 Subscribe for weekly post-mortems on the cars, companies and engineering decisions that shaped modern motoring.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
#MitsubishiLancer #LancerEvolution #MitsubishiEvo #TommiMakinen #WorldRallyChampionship #WRC #RallyCars #AutomotiveHistory #CarNerd #Engineering #JoginderSingh #TheCarNerd