JUN TEN volume 2

After the car was sorted out with some trademark JUN lemon-yellow paint, it was then entrusted to a shop called Art Factory in the nearby suburb of Musashi-Murayama. Art Factory’s full-colour custom printed vinyl graphics are increasingly being seen on a lot of high-end shop demo and show cars, often with a very distinct traditional Japanese woodblock-art style, some kind of high-tech cyber-machine theme, or quite often in a wild combination of the two. They even make a range of their more famous designs neatly shrunken-down for remote control car shells. The JUN Evo X doesn’t sport anything as extreme as a samurai with a lightsaber though. Rather, a more corporate vinyl style of JUN’s signature rocker-cover colour scheme of a yellow-to-green fade sweeps along the entire length of the car and up over the rear quarter, overlaid with an eye-catching black stripe pattern.

Since the Evo X hasn’t been available for a very long time, and new owners are probably still coming to grips with their cars in standard form, JUN can be forgiven for not coming out with a ridiculously full-house build just yet. Rather, the car has been built with a “stage one” level of tuning. The difference here is that it yields “stage four” benefits. 280kW at 7000rpm and 473Nm of torque at 4000rpm is a decent figure for a street car, but what’s most impressive is how little needed to be done to the Evo to get a good power figure out of it. The turbo on the 4B11T has an aluminium alloy turbine and a titanium-aluminium alloy compressor, the same durable materials as used in some of the previous generation of JDM Evos. A custom JUN wastegate actuator, Trust Profec B-Spec II boost controller and Trust titanium exhaust system were the only things needed to bump up the power to something respectable.

Even though most owners of the Evo X will have nicely bolstered Recaro front buckets fitted as standard, the RS model was supplied with regular old passenger recliners, since they were never really expected to serve any purpose other than being a place to sit while driving the car away from the dealership and into a workshop before being replaced. Bride Zeta III full-bucket seats are an appropriate choice in this case. The only other changes in the interior are a Works Bell detachable boss and steering wheel, and a set of GReddy gauges in a carbon-fibre trim panel where the non-existent stereo system should be. The AWC bias control switch, which used to live on the standard steering wheel, has been relocated to roughly the same position, mounted on a metal panel bolted to the steering column cover.

The nicely lowered suspension is composed of a full set of Zeal Super Function R coilovers, which feature remote oil reservoirs and adjustment capabilities for both damper bound and rebound. The remote reservoir model is the latest version of these high end coilovers to be released, and are a suitable choice since JUN have been using Zeal Super Function suspension in everything from their Tsukuba time attack cars to their 400km/h+ Bonneville Supra.

The standard Evo X is equipped with 18-inch Enkei wheels and 245/40 tyres as standard, so JUN went the requisite inch-up, and fitted four Yokohama Advan Racing RZ 19x10-inch rims with Yokohama Advan Sport 265/30 street tyres. Behind these, the standard Brembo brakes have been replaced with a set of Endless Racing six-piston calipers on the front, and four pistons on the rear.

Even though the JUN workshop is capable of ridiculous feats of engineering and tuning, they chose to go relatively mild with this demo car, but the end result is neat and inspiring for owners of the new generation of Lancers. Once the Evo X model matures a bit, it should be interesting to see how far the new engine and platform can be pushed. If previous JUN demo cars are anything to go by, it should be something worth waiting for.