Liquid Gold

Think Mitsubishi Evo and Chances Are the Car You Picture Is Some Arched, Caged, Rally Weapon. Rich Colbeck’s Liquid Yellow Takes Those Preconceptions and Unceremoniously Kicks Them to the Curb!

- Jarkle

It’s funny what immediately draws your eye when you first spot a certain car. Often what you opt to focus on says a lot about what you find most interesting about cars in general – and perhaps,more often than not, your preconceptions as to what a specific car should and shouldn’t have done to it.

This Evo VIII you see here is a fine example. Built over the last five months by Rich Colbeck (we’ll get to that in a moment), there are almost certainly two things about it that catch your eye: the lack of the trademark rear wing, and the colour – Renault Liquid Yellow.

“I’d always wanted an Evo and always fancied painting a car in that colour, so introducing the two made a lot of sense,” recalls Rich. “I finally got the cash together and bought the car from a friend. Back then it was still yellow, just an OE coat of 50 shades of yellow!”

Clearly not one to hang around when it comes to modifying cars, Rich pretty much dived right in with the bodywork tweaks you see here, starting with lashings of genuine carbon fibre. Rich readily admits that he got a tad carried away here, with his first purchase, the bonnet, swiftly leading to both front wings, the front splitter, and to visually balance things out somewhat, the boot. The ironic thing is that as Rich’s Evo is a GSR, a model sold with lightweight aluminium front panels from the factory, the carbon fibre components actually weighed fractionally more than the ones they replaced!