The Con­cept RA has appeared in Detroit look­ing like a cross between the new Lancer EVO and (per­haps) the lat­est gen­er­a­tion USDM Mit­subishi Eclipse, or even an Audi TT.

The strictly con­cept only (Sorry, guys and girls) Con­cept RA sports a 2.2 litre, DOHC 16-​​valve 150kw/​201HP/​420nm high out­put, clean burn diesel engine, as part of Mitsubishi’s new drive towards eco-​​friendly per­for­mance sports cars.

In order to achieve low con­sump­tion while not sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance means the Con­cept RA fea­tures Mitsubishi’s pro­pri­etary MIVEC vari­able valve con­trol tech­nol­ogy, an all alu­minum space frame, vari­able diffuser/​variable geom­e­try tur­bocharger, peizo­elec­tric injec­tor sys­tem and also sports some impact resis­tant, recy­clable plas­tic resin pan­els as part of it’s construction.

Envi­ron­men­tal fea­tures include a new cat­alytic con­verter sys­tem that com­bines a diesel oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst (DOC), NOx trap cat­a­lyst (NTC) and diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) in addi­tion to the highly effi­cient 2.2 litre clean burn­ing diesel.

Of course, the Con­cept RA sports Full­time 4WD, Twin Clutch SST Trans­mis­sion, and the new S-​​AWC (Super-​​All Wheel Con­trol) most notably seen on the new EVO. As men­tioned before on IJ, S-​​AWC is a com­bi­na­tion of exist­ing tech­nolo­gies, Active Cen­ter Dif­fer­en­tial, Active Yaw Con­trol, ABS and Active Sta­bil­ity Control.

Unfor­tu­nately though, all this is to be shelved as the car is designed purely as a con­cept, and won’t chal­lenge either Honda’s offer­ing in the new CRZ (CRX) or Toyota’s rumored new ‘AE86’.


PRESS RELEASE

MITSUBISHI Concept-​​RA

Illus­trat­ing the fact that thrilling per­for­mance and envi­ron­men­tal respon­si­bil­ity need not be mutu­ally exclu­sive con­cepts, MITSUBISHI Concept-​​RA fea­tures the S-​​AWC vehi­cle dynam­ics con­trol sys­tem and the Twin Clutch SST auto­mated man­ual trans­mis­sion used in the Lancer Evo­lu­tion. The car is pow­ered by a new high-​​output, high-​​efficiency clean diesel engine and uses an alu­minum space frame body to reduce weight.
(1) Design
Devel­oped as a “MMC tech­nol­ogy show­case”, the design uses styl­ish sport coupe pro­por­tions wrapped in dynamic flow­ing lines that give pow­er­ful and elo­quent expres­sion to the car’s advanced tech­no­log­i­cal fea­tures. Mus­cu­lar wheel arches hous­ing 21-​​inch wheels give graphic expres­sion to the pow­er­ful drive torque and stop­ping power that Mitsubishi’s S-​​AWC vehi­cle dynam­ics con­trol sys­tem trans­mits so effec­tively to the road sur­face, while an exposed engine cover high­lights the pres­ence of the car’s new pow­er­ful and clean diesel engine. MITSUBISHI Concept-​​RA also sports the inverted-​​slant nose with trape­zoidal grille fas­cia that marks Mit­subishi Motors new design iden­tity, suit­ably tweaked to reflect the car’s sport coupe attrib­utes.
MITSUBISHI Concept-​​RA uses red exte­rior col­or­ing that graph­i­cally accen­tu­ates the beauty of its fluid body lines, counter-​​pointed by a matte black engine hood that imparts a strongly mechan­i­cal fla­vor.
The inte­rior has been devel­oped to show a fusion of tra­di­tion with leading-​​edge touches. The cockpit’s wrap-​​round con­trol lay­out uses min­i­mal visual instru­men­ta­tion and opti­mizes the switch and con­trol lay­out. This reduces the driver’s phys­i­cal and men­tal work­load, allow­ing full con­cen­tra­tion on dri­ving. The inte­rior also makes exten­sive use of fine-​​quality nat­ural mate­ri­als in a design that deliv­ers a reas­sur­ing pres­ence and peace of mind.
(2) Tech­nolo­gies
The MITSUBISHI Concept-RA’s S-​​AWC dri­v­e­line adds Active Steer­ing and Active Damper to the ACD*1, AYC*2, Sport ABS*3 and ASC*4 com­po­nents that make up the sys­tem used on Lancer Evo­lu­tion. S-​​AWC inte­grally man­ages these sys­tems to real­ize advanced lev­els of con­trol over drive torque and brak­ing at each wheel, thereby rais­ing trac­tion, cor­ner­ing and vehi­cle sta­bil­ity lev­els. All this adds up to intu­itive, on-​​demand vehi­cle behav­ior that faith­fully reflects dri­ver intent under all dri­ving con­di­tions, from every­day use to emer­gency avoid­ance sit­u­a­tions.
MITSUBISHI Concept-​​RA is pow­ered by a new high-​​efficiency and low-​​emission 2.2-liter 4-​​cylinder DOHC 16-​​valve turbo-​​diesel engine with MIVEC, which switches between low and high-​​speed cam pro­files to drive intake valves, and piezo­elec­tric injec­tor common-​​rail direct fuel injec­tion, allow­ing the use of a lower com­pres­sion ratio. And with its VD/​VG (Vari­able Dif­fuser /​ Vari­able Geom­e­try) tur­bocharger pro­duc­ing opti­mum boost char­ac­ter­is­tics at all times, the clean diesel unit deliv­ers a max­i­mum out­put of 150 kW (204 PS) and max­i­mum torque of 420 Nm (42.8 kg-​​m). For com­pli­ance with Tier 2 Bin 5 emis­sion reg­u­la­tions in the United States, the clean power unit uses a new cat­alytic con­verter sys­tem that brings together diesel oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst (DOC), NOx trap cat­a­lyst (NTC) and diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) tech­nolo­gies
For improved crash­wor­thi­ness and to reduce weight MITSUBISHI Concept-​​RA fea­tures a new body struc­ture using an alu­minum space frame made from extruded alu­minum sec­tions and die-​​cast alu­minum mem­bers, as well as engine hood, fend­ers and other outer pan­els made from high impact-​​resistance and eas­ily recy­clable plas­tic resin.

*1 Active Cen­ter Dif­fer­en­tial
*2 Active Yaw Con­trol
*3 Sport Antilock Brake Sys­tem
*4 Active Sta­bil­ity Control

via MMC