Faults:

It's the turbo touring model and I'm at about 130,000km now.

- Noticeably noisy tappets.

- Dashboard lights blown.

- Shocks need replacing.

- Expensive, hard-to-get-to oil leaks.

- Radiator fan stays on, sensor broken.

- Ignition coils need replacing.

- The turbo appears to do nothing.

- Fuel gauge broken; I suspect some sort of damper fault.

General Comments:

Comfortable and nice to drive. But in more recent times it has caused me a lot of grief.

Faults:

Power steering went when I first got the car, at the time covered by factory warranty. Not sure how much that would cost to fix normally, but met plenty of other Lancer owners and no-one else had that problem.

Mid-2007, dash cluster developed a weird problem where ALL the instruments (ie. speedo, tacho, odometer) turned off randomly. Problem gradually got worse and had the cluster replaced by an auto-electrician/wrecker, cost was $210 ($150 for cluster, $60 labour). Fault lay entirely within old cluster. Again, not common.

General Comments:

Apart from the problems above, my Lancer was faultless. It was very easy to drive with a light clutch and decent handling. I only sold it as my partner and I had a baby, and a small coupe doesn't make a great family car. It was my first car, and I would recommend as a first car or runabout.

Excellent on fuel (6.2L/100km on the highway with A/C on), and servicing is fairly cheap as it is a common car.

Front seats are a little firm for long trips and back seats (in the coupe, at least) have very little legroom, nor do they fold down. Boot space is generous for a small car.

Being the 1.5L it won't set your pants on fire in the performance department. However, they are reliable if serviced regularly, and easy to modify if you're into that.

Faults:

Active yaw control pump went; a common fault with these cars.

General Comments:

What can I say? This car is absolutely fantastic!

Performance is so impressive, the pull in 5th gear over 50mph is unbelievable. 280bhp as standard, so I can't imagine how quick an fq320, 340 would be!

One of the best handling cars on the road; so responsive.

Recaro seats grip securely but are very comfortable.

Running costs may be quite expensive, but if you can afford to buy one, you can afford to run one I say.

Prices are dropping on this car at the moment, so if you have the cash and want a performance car, the Evo is the must have. I have owned an Impreza and it wasn't a patch on the Evo.

Buy one and you won't look back.

Faults:

Nothing has gone wrong with the car since I got it.

General Comments:

The 2 most common comments by anyone who has ridden it and has been near it are:

Paints looks like it was just bought this year. Car looks like new!

Engine doesn't even purr when you start it. It is very silent and the 1.5L carburator engine is pretty powerful.

This is amazing because prior owner never changed the oil for its entire 44000 km run! Although I am now religious with changing oil every 5000 km.

Gas consumption is relatively low for a 1.5L car. Not as good as a 1.3L car of course, but low for engines in its displacement class.