Mitsubishi L200 RS

Since the instant we got dial-up internet — I am indeed ‘so old’ I had to disconnect from the internet so the phone line could be used for calls — I’ve been looking at cars on the line, in the series of tubes.

Because of this, I’ve kept one of my highly attuned talents-slash-obsessions mostly secret:

I have a talent for finding obscure, borderline unobtainable homologation specials. 

Less in the sense of a Ferrari F40 barn find, more in the vein of this early 2000s Mitsubishi factory racing truck that looks as if it’d happily go all Rocky Balboa on any Ford Raptor that runs its mouth about being “off-road capable”.

Capable, yes. Just like I’m capable of leaving the high dive platform…once. This is why you can take any production off-road vehicle, hand it to an off-road racing professional, and it will be creatively disassembled before sunset.

As a huge company such as Mitsubishi, taking the extra step to build a series of (still road legal depending on where you’re at) racing machines and homologating them for competition is a huge endeavour.

The last thing they’d want? Bad results. Second last thing? Bad reliability — an L200 seen smoking terribly past a group of spectators or breaking key components could be a PR nightmare. 

Really: what do you think of if I put ‘Mercedes’ and ‘Le Mans Mulsanne Straight’ in the same sentence?

I think you’d recall that cartwheel-flipping a vehicle into the trees is a less effective approach to off-roading than upgrading key components for trundling over gnarly terrain in South America.

Let me teach you how to spot more of the under-the-radar homologation specials…