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’.

Accord­ing to Auto­blog, all 300 lim­ited edi­tion Type R based Mugen RR Civics have been either bought or reserved.

On Sep­tem­ber 14th at 9:00 AM local time in Japan, reser­va­tions opened for the RR. By 9:10 AM all reser­va­tion slots were filled, well in advance of the release date expected around Jan­u­ary. Capa­ble of doing Tsukuba in 1:06:38, the RR sets each new owner back a hefty �4.7million, but comes with a mighty 177kW nat­u­rally aspi­rated 4 cylin­der and weighs just 1240kg in full trim.

Sub­aru have done it again with the new Legacy Tour­ing Wagon, tuned by STi with 260-​​hp/​253 lb-​​ft in the Pro-​​drive 5 speed auto­matic or 280-​​hp/​253 lb-​​ft in the 6 speed man­ual from the 2.0L 4cyl turbo pow­er­plant, the new wagon looks even bet­ter than last years.

The New 2008 JDM Legacy Tour­ing Wagon, Click To Enlarge

What can I say. I’m excited, with looks that should be stan­dard on any wagon (espe­cially in that white), and of course all wheel drive, the Tour­ing comes with these extras. Yum.

• STI 18″ wheels
• STI leather key case
• McIn­tosh audio system
• HDD nav­i­ga­tion system
• STI springs and dampers
• STI strut tower bar
• Brembo brakes
• STI sports muffler
• STI-​​branded sill plates
• STI-​​programmed ECU

Imported B4’s are all over the streets here, and I can­not wait to see these on road in Aus­tralia, fin­gers crossed soon. The wagon has always reminded me of the Stagea, a turbo motor in a good look­ing wagon pack­age, though the Touring’s sus­pen­sion trim­mings are more than a match for the Stagea. Hit Auto­blog below for more smile pro­duc­ing pictures!

[Source: Auto­blog]