The 2000 Lancers

2000 signaled the end of an era in the World Rally Championship, with Mitsubishi's dominance more often broken by Ford, Subaru and Peugeot. The fact that the Lancer was not good enough became vividly evident in the first part of the season, and Mäkinen struggled to keep the car on the road and get some result out of it at the same time. Then came New Zealand, and a failed attempt to bring new parts into the old specification car - embarassingly, Loix was withdrawn because his car was unsafe to drive. From Finland on, the full new specification arrived, including the absolutely out of Gr.A rules rear suspension, new front bumper, and couple of chassis updates (and in Australia, a funny turbo that led to Tommi's exclusion).

For 2001, the car was almost a WRC, and in fact it was not classified with those cars due to the fact that the rear suspension was still multilink (WRC rules say front and rear should be McPherson). Otherthan that, a tilted back engine, new evolution of rear suspension, chassis updates revived the car for the first part of the season, but the struggles hit again, and the once mighty Gr.A Lancer retired as a works car with a lowly 8th place. And despite what Tommi says, they couldn't have won the championship with this car either, that's for sure.

W2 MMR

W4 MMR

W9 MMR

X2 MMR

X3 MMR

X33 MMR

X6 MMR

X66 MMR