After a year of testing, Mitsubishi returned to the WRC with this car; they claimed it had 6000 different parts compared to the Step2 WRCs, and the hopes were high: possibly a bit too much. Mechanical and electrical glitches proved hard to overcome, but with a very young car and an inexperienced team in how-to-make-a-WRC-faster category, the season wasn't that bad at all; in fact, the car showed a lot of promise. Since the Step2 cars and the WRCs only share about the base chassis and the base of the engine, Mitsubishi decided that the chassis numbers will start from 1 again.
For 2005, the rules changed, allowing the manufacturers with cars above a certain length to upgrade them to 1800mm width. This went for the Lancer as well, and brought some changes with it: different suspension, transmission, bodywork and chassis updates made the car better; but in the end, Mitsubishi pulled out again, this time for good.
In 2007, MML Sports prepared an update package to the car, with new suspension and updated chassis, claiming that the 2007 specification car is 0.5 s/km faster than the older one. Many of these cars achieved success in national championships, most notably in Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia, the Netherlands and lately Belgium.
I thought there is a chassis number 13 in this case, so KP54 GXY is C013 and the following cars move up by 1 too.
VálaszTörlés