amahrap

Esteemed Scooby owners, wannabies and petrol sniffing junkies I seek your wise advice and trusted opinions.

I am considering an addition to the toys available at Châteaux Parham in the form of an EVO . Please feel free to pick yourself off the floor at this point .

I was looking at an Evo 9 FQ-360 recently that would have involved the sale of my much loved and very attractive (well I think so) Bug STi7 plus a bucket of extra cash. I have never owned, much less driven such a car so this would have been a high risk undertaking . I have also noticed that Scooby to Evo transitions more often than is comfortable revert at some point back to Scooby. This is often accompanied by words of description such as, “mad as a box of frogs”, “bloody good fun but soulless”, “a pig to drive round town”, “expensive to run”, “miss the burble” and “unreliable gearboxes”.

My much loved and understanding wifey upon seeing my dilemma hit upon a cunning solution to the problem “why don’t you buy an older one, own both then you can see what you think. I can also have some fun in it and by the way I will also give you a £1k donation towards it” (As you can see even though she is a committed soap and BB fan I can put up with that due to her motoring altruism – bloody result if you ask me)

My price bracket will take in Evo 4/5 but possibly for the right model and price a 6.

Do any of you have any wise advice, ownership experience on what these are like? What should I aim for, what do I need to avoid? Any general thoughts and observations?

I will of course do lots of research on MLR but I thought that I might get some more objective thoughts from you guys as I know that some of you have owned both at some stage.

All Evo thoughts, views and advice appreciated .

Tobisausage

I don't know much but I do know (think) that the Evo 4 looks dated when compared to the 5/6 and watch out for those absolutely awful fog light covers some of the 6's come fitted with.

SW Sport Pilot

im sure ive read a few threads asking similar questions which may be worth dredging up mate.

Out of personal experience my mate went from a 400BHP rover 600TI(dont ask but that was mad as a box of frogs ) to an Evo and he spent a lot of time looking for the right one, thinks thats the most importent like all these sort of cars keep searching until the perfect one appears cause they are out there.

From what i remember the Evo 4 wasnt the best of cars and suffered from a variety of engine problems, i was looking at one of these and was warned from them.My mate bought a GSR Evo 6 and found that the 5 and 6 are very silmilar cars with slight differences in cooling systems and body kits, the MLR website has a great comparative system for looking at these sort of things.

Ive driven both his Evo 6 and my Uk Turbo and they are slightly different beasts, i find scoobs easier to drive, they can cruise happily and still go well when given the beans where as the Evo's are a little harsher and struggle with town cruising slightly i do think they are the more exciting car to drive though and do feel like they have a lot more umphh.

these are all my opinions though and im sure people will all have various ideas about them.

Cheers

Ian

Adam M

awful fog light covers?

thats highly subjective very useful advice

Don't get a 4, the engines are inherently weak as they suffer from crankwalk and do look dated.

5 and 6 are mostly stylistically different but there are so many 6s for 10k now am sure you could find a decent one for not much more than you were probably planning to spend on a 4.

Try to stretch to a 7 as the jump up in body stiffness makes for a much better ownership prospect.

I loved my 22b as it was special, but the amount of car I got for 10k when switching to an evo made the value comparison a joke.

The 8 I have now is the best car I have ever owned, despite being in love with the 22B for my 6 years of ownership.

markGT

If you can afford it I'd stretch to a Tommi Makenin EVO VI. However do your research and choose carefully. If you know sombody who has experience of EVO's take him/her along. Saying that I spend ages looking for a reputable dealer, asked on the MLR site about said garage, nobody said a bad word about them and they used to be Ralliart UK. To cut a long story short I ended up getting ripped off so beware! Top motors though EVO's!

delcbr

what a bout one of these beasts Mazda : MAZDA 323 GTR VERY RARE THE CLEANEST EXAMPLE

RUDDY

obviously depends on the subaru you drive but i find EVO's to be always up in the revs so to speak!!

BillyBong

Is this true then ? I've not seen many (no more than 1 or 2 I can remember TBH) mention on the MLR that they are selling their Evo for a Subaru.

I love both so have no axe to grind but the Evo is harder work day to day to own than the Scooby was (I had a 98 STI 4 in 98, then went to a 7RS2 in 03 and now a 400HP 9GT). Not really due to the short service intervals (4.5K but I dont do that many miles anyway) or the increased insurance (and personally I find it isn't that much more if you shop around) but more because the Evo seems to be biased more towards outright performance, at the expense of day to day 'niceness' than the Scoob was.

If your Scoob occasionally feels too hard edged for you I would steer clear of the Evo. If sometimes the Scoob doesn't seem sharp enough then its time to get DarkSided !!

Fuel wise my STI did 18 mpg, my Evo does 25 with the same type of driving. Gearboxes in my experience are much tougher on the Evo. Modding is also a lot easier with the Evo, £1500 odd pounds and you get 400HP . It would not be fair to compare the handling of my 9GT with my 98 STI so I won't (but the 9GT is one of the best handling cars I have ever been in )

Admittedly my experience was with older scoobies, from what I read the newer ones, especially the Spec C and JDM stuff are balanced more towards outright performance like the Evo anyway so it comes down to how much of trade off you want between daily 'niceness' and B road madness !

On what to buy the 5 or 6 is loved by the market as a whole. 4's as has been said can have more weak spots than the others. The 7 (11 - 12K ish for a decent / nice 1) is the best value and probably the best overall drive (less raw than the 5 / 6 but with all if not more of the dynamics) if you can stretch to one and can get on with the looks.

The FQ360 is a really expensive way of getting a 9 with that power level. Buy a 9 FQ320, visit any reputable tuner and you will have 400 / 380 ish for about 24 - 26K in total.

Apologies for the length of my reply !!

One thing is for sure you will always ALWAYS miss the Scooby burble !