The Seven-Second Club’s a rarefied one within drag racing circles.
But a seven-second quarter mile time’s even rarer for Subaru WRX and Lancer Evolution fans that are more used to flinging their all-claw terrors sideways on dirt.

The car covered the quarter mile in 7.902 seconds at a whopping 298.26km/h when wheeled to an air-strip in Greece, recently besting this with a 7.884sec.
These are times fast enough to etch it in the record books as the world’s fastest Lancer Evolution VII, VIII, or IX, its maker claims.

Yep, that’s right, that gear-shattering amount of power is produced from an engine smaller than a Woolies milk bottle.
There are a few tricks employed to help. The compressor, for one, is made from carbon-fibre and sized at 91mm. Meanwhile, the 1.8-litre spins to a stratospheric 13,000rpm under a 15.8:1 compression ratio.

However that doesn’t stop it from breaking often. The tuners claiming power needed to be wound down to 1877kW for the seven-second passes.
The differential isn’t the only thing hanging on for dear life. The all-wheel drive IX, even with fat drag racing slicks, struggles to stay straight. Have a watch above for yourself.