Sometime in October 2011 I told myself that I need a second track oriented car. I often thought about it the past 12 months, but now it was for real. A car that would be better suited for fast tracks such as Spa Francorchamps, the Nurburgring and so on. Did lots of brainstorming and decided it would have to be turbo and fast. Didn’t care too much if it would drift or not, wanted something that grips hard. So what was the outcome of all that brainstorming? A Scooby GT or an early Lancer Evo (4-6). Prices are way to high for european models, so I decided it should have to be a RHD car. UK has a large market for these Japan imports, prices are good and the £ to € exchange rate was good to!

So at some point I decided it has to be an Evo. Why? Simply because it’s more aggressive looking, doesn’t have a Boxer engine and because it’s just more rare and way more spirited (imho) than a Subaru.

Did some Forum and Pistonheads research for several weeks and found some really interesting cars. The first two I considered were sold even before I was able to travel to see them. So I found another ad about a white Evo 5 not to far away (+-9 hours of road) in the south-east of the UK.

After several mails and even some more mails I just paid a deposit without having seen the car in real at all. Seller stated all was good and in good order, some minor scratches, no rust, mechanically working,… as usual but not always the truth as I’ll find out later.

So I gathered 3 of my buddies and we planned the road trip. Plan was to leave early, get the ferry to the UK at 12:00, travel 2 hours by sea, do another few hundred miles, check and buy the car, get some food and sleep at a Hotel and travel home by 2 cars the other day.
 

Oh, and here’s the part of Team NBU that did this road trip, from left to right (Mitch, me, Nuudel):
 

And of course the guy who took the pic, Eiwiss:

 
And that’s how it went. Slaughtered my bank account to get the needed british pounds, alarm clock rang at 7am (way to early for a Saturday morning) and off we went.

After some 4 hours of foggy road we reached Dunkerque in Belgium and waited to get on the ferry. We then parked the car for the next 2 hours in the boat and went straight to the onboard restaurant for some food and some Bulmers cider

Once arrived on English tarmac we had another +3 hours of road to hit. Unfortunately there aren’t any more pics of day 1 as we were so distracted by driving on the wrong side of the road.

We eventually arrived at the sellers house by 6PM and as winter sucks it was dark already, so no pics either. We inspected the car for general body condition, engine condition, engine leaks, noises,… and I went for a drive with the guy. As I’m a real over-enthusiastic when it comes into buying cars I tend to overlook things. So I discussed approx 30 seconds with the other 3 of us and gone for it. Done deal, bill of sale, paperwork,… the Evo was mine.

We checked in at our Hotel, got some food and lots of beer to celebrate the acquisition

The day after we headed home. Little sidenote, English breakfast is what it’s known for! If you don’t like beans, sausages, bacon and crumbled eggs in the morning you’ll start your journey quite hungry!

So, here it is, the first actual pic of my new car taken by me after getting some gas:

Oh, as I soon found out, getting gas is your major activity when owning an Evo. 12,x l/100km or 18MPG was the best I could manage when travelling home at moderate highway speeds of 120km/h or 80MPH.

So, same procedure as the day before, driving highways, ferry including eating and chilling, more driving, arriving at the destination in the dark.

Once at home the car was parked at our “team NBU shelter”, a last beer was drunk an everybody went home for some sleep. Quite exhausted but very happy about my new car I even ordered the first parts for it the same night

And just to let you all know, he’s got a pretty rad Accord too:

Yeah, I don’t like em at all

Car and wheels belong to a guy from Switzerland. He goes by the name of peach on the forums. All props to him!