Showdown: Land of the Rising Maple Leaf Edition

It’s been a while since our last Showdown, where the bruiser Lincoln Capri crushed a Ginetta G4 under its ‘Merican heel. This week, we’re not crossing an ocean, just the 49th Parallel. Hearing the (old) news (for the first time via Autoblog) that those dirty Quebecois are looking to restrict importation of RHD imports reminded me of just how jealous I am of my northerly neighbors, who seem to be swimming in discarded Delicas and abandoned Aristos. Need more convincing?


The Mazda (ok, insufferable Mazda fanboy, it’s technically a Eunos) Cosmo is probably most famous for being the only receptacle around for the impossibly awesome, wallet-shatteringly complicated, 20B-REW. That’s a 2 liter, 3-rotor, twin sequential turbocharged unit making about 300 HP and 300 ft-lbs of torque. This made the Cosmo capable of eating up Canadian dollars even faster than it sucked fuel and oil, whose consumption was prodigious in its own right. Much like a Mercedes 300SEL 6.3 of yore, this is a high-strung, high-tech machine. Can you afford to feed it? Can you afford NOT to?

Compared to the Cosmo, this little Lancer is positively pedestrian, being based on a humble compact sedan. There’s nothing humble about the boosted drivetrain, because although Mitsubishi stuffed the 4G63 Sirius engine into pretty much every vehicle they could, it made a healthy 237 HP in Evo I trim. Factor in AWD lifted from the earlier Galant VR-4, and it was a contender. Perhaps more importantly, it kicked off a whole series of Lancer Evos, and a performance heritage rivaled only by its rival, the Impreza WRX. Future classic? It’s a present classic.
So what will it be?
[poll id=”17″]