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| The stock lights are fugly, they look like fake Altezzas. |
We wanted to do something with the front of the car temporarily until we fitted the rest of our Varis aero kit so we added a carbon front spoiler to the stock bumper from Street Concept. To further our GT for the street theme we also added some carbon fiber side canards to our bumper from Rhys Millen racing. Coincidentally the carbon weave from these parts happed to match the weave of our Varis parts exactly. Brian Kono from Afterhours Automotive fitted our aero parts to the car reinforcing their mounts with fiberglass and epoxy resin to make damage from contact with the ground less likely. Although you might scoff of the idea of aero parts making a difference at street speed, the bits made a large feelable difference on the freeeway. Prior to adding the aero parts, project EVO felt slightly nervous at high speeds and with strong crosswinds. At the time we figured this was due to perhaps an iffy alignment job performed by the car’s prior owners or the fact that a stock EVO has very fast steering. On our way home from Afterhours we were surprised to find the car rock steady hands off stable. We were happy that our mods that we purchased for looks were also functional!
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| The lights with the black surrounds are the much better looking JDM MR lights |
The EVO VIII comes with perhaps the worst looking head and taillights of any production car. The cheesy fake Altezza look that was hip 10 years ago looks gaudy and cheap on today’s car. We rarely go for purely cosmetic mods but the stock lights were painful to look at and from seeing what the lights looked like on the JDM EVO MR, we decided that we had to get some of these on my car. When our SO asked why we put those nasty aftermarket lights on our car (without touching a thing), our mind was already made up, they had to go, right now. We did some searching on the web and called a few places. One of the only places that actually had them in stock for sale right now was Z-1 Motorsports, a place that sells EVO goodies on line. They even had a pretty decent price. We bought them as a Christmas present to us.
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| The JDM MR light in place. | The lights make a huge improvement on how the car looks |
The JDM lights have a black surround around the projector lights. They have an amber element in the front and the rear amber element is reversed from the USDM light. They only work with car that came with HID lights and you have to take the HID transformer and bulb from your old light and transfer them onto the new lights. You have to switch the fog light bulb and connector to a 9006 style which is pretty easy. Z-1 sells a kit to do so if you are lazy. They also sell an HID conversion kit if your car didn’t come with HID’s from the factory. For the rear you simply have to take the bulbs and harness from your old lights and switch them to you new lights. The conversion is simple that the way they change the look of the car is simply amazing. From rice to nice in a few hours.
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| The Perrin antenna is also an essential cosmetic piece |
The EVO has a roof mounted antenna which looks nicer than the fender mounted ones that cars traditionally came with for generations. The roof mounted antenna also works better for reception than glass mounted hidden antennas. Unfortunately the EVO’s stock antenna is sort of a long and weird looking thing. To make things worse, some asshole decided it would be cool to steal our stock antenna while we were inside a restaurant eating lunch. To clean up our roof line we replaced our antenna with a short antenna from Perrin. The low cost piece improves the looks of the car considerably; it is worth several times its low price. It is made of a soft rubbery material so it probably wont break easily and we did not notice any deterioration of the radio performance even though it is about 1/5 the length of the stock antenna. We would say that the Perrin piece is one of the first bits any EVO lover should get just from a looks standpoint.
Well the look of the car is changed radically for the better, at least in our opinion and our style is functional as well as clean. We know that many of you may be upset that we tore a nice custom car apart but our version should end up being smoking fast on the track as well as cool looking. Stay tuned, in coming segments we will totally change the suspension around as well as the motor and the brakes. Big names are involved, like Cosworth, Moton, Stoptech, Cusco and others.
Happy Motoring.
