Killer Conquest – LS Powered Conquest Starion
We are starting a new feature at MotoIQ called “The Alley”. The Alley is our ultimate photo location area, which also happens to be the alley behind the palatial and luxurious MotoIQ Megashop. With its mix of legit urban backdrops, great lighting and convenient location, it's perfect for our lazy ass photographers! The Alley moniker will be used when we feature street builds that we would be proud to drive ourselves.
When I first saw John Lazorack's 1988 Conquest TSi at the Japanese Classic Car show, I immediately did a double take and backtracked to get a closer look. You see I have always had a soft spot in my heart for these cars after having wanted one really badly when I was a young man. Well not a Conquest but but its badge engineered sibling, the Mitsubishi Starion ESi-R.
With its sleek coupe shape and aggressive widebody fenders, the car looked and still looks just so right. The car also came with stuff that was pretty exotic for the time that we now all take for granted like 4 wheel independent suspension, a 0.32 drag coefficient, 4 wheel disc brakes, a limited slip differential and a 225hp turbocharged intercooled 2600cc engine.
John's Conquest is beautiful with the styling and modifications still very relevant despite the car being 26 year old. The car is remarkable as there was little aftermarket support in the cars heyday and absolutely none now. This means that john has crafted all of the cars parts himself!This car's story begins when a 16 year old John Lazorack bought the Conquest which was a well kept 70,000 mile car. He used to car to drive back and forth to school for a couple of years. In his first year of college John did what many owners of this car family have done, he blew up the G54B engine.
You can't just call someone up and buy a Starion/Conquest wide body kit. John fabricated all of it by hand himself.Typically the G54B engine suffers from head gasket sealing, balance shaft and head cracking issues and the problems tend to rear their heads when the engine is pushed much harder than stock. The engine also had a super low 7:1 compression ratio which made it pretty sluggish off boost. Despite this John first attempted to do your typical upgrades by building the engine's internals and installing a larger turbo.
The wide front fenders feature vents that reduce drag by bleeding high pressure air from the wheelwells.Despite all the new mods John was still not satisfied with the engine's performance or reliability and when he left home for college, the car stayed home and sat for a few years. During this time, John would work on the car during school breaks focusing mostly on body work.
The front airdam, undertray and splitter are all home grown and are quite functional. Far from being a garage queen/show car, you can see all of the rock scars from track days on the car. This is not a hard parker!Eventually John got frustrated with the car and it sat for another few years until he graduated from school and got a job in Detroit. Now with a home base to operate from, he dragged the car to its new home and began work in earnest rebuilding it from the ground up exactly how he wanted.
