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"         Our cover story-comparison test of the street rockets, (commonly called the Evo X) and the newly styled , brings out the desire for high-performance cars in all of us. Young car enthusiasts gravitate to these two cars because they are street versions of the World Rally Championship cars from and , they are relatively inexpensive to buy, and they offer sensational performance. Sure, you can also justify them because they are 4-door sedans and will haul the family and the groceries, too, but the reality is they are built for fun.                   Datsun 200SX. Photo by Su Kemper.                       Richard Baron&amp;#039;s excellent navigation skills kept us on track \u2014 and he was also a good pusher. Photo by Richard M. Baron.       Spending time driving these two modern quasi-rally cars brought back a flood of memories for me and Design Director Richard Baron. Some 25 years ago, we &amp;quot;volunteered&amp;quot; (jumped at the chance!) to participate in an SCCA Pro-Rally, the Miller Centennial Pro Rallye &amp;#039;82, in the mountains of Colorado. We would be driving/navigating a Datsun 200SX thoroughly prepped by Steve Millen who had recently emigrated to America from New Zealand (and who would go on to capture a number of off-road stadium racing titles, winning championships in the IMSA GT series and grabbing a class victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans).   The car was a &amp;quot;press car&amp;quot; that would be entered in various events and driven by journalists who could then write about their exciting adventures. Our story in Road &amp;amp;amp; Track (January 1983) detailed the preparation of the car, arranged through Datsun ( now) and managed by our old friend Ed Jacobs, who was at that time the BFGoodrich manager of communication services and a true enthusiast of motorsports. We were seeded 35th out of 37 entries, reflecting our total lack of Pro-Rally experience, although Richard and I both had experience in off-road racing in Baja California, Mexico, so we figured we could probably do this event without making complete fools of ourselves.   What had started as a beautiful weekend of weather near the small town of Monument, not far from Colorado Springs, soon turned to autumnal cold, fog and drizzle. And these conditions quickly led to muddy tracks through the forests and up and down the hills that were part of the rally&amp;#039;s special stages. In one part of the story of our adventure, I wrote about a nasty, muddy grade we had to climb, but only after Richard and several other navigators got out of the warmth of their cars and pushed a bogged-down Fiat X1/9 out of the way, and then had to do it again when a RX-2 jumped the line of waiting cars and sank in the same mudhole. To this day, Richard likes to remind me that while my Simpson Nomex driving suit looked pristine at the finish, his was the color of Colorado&amp;#039;s finest mud.   Throughout the cold and rainy night, we danced the Datsun through the fog, the trees, the edges of ravines and along forest roads, keeping up a decent but sane pace that enabled us to finish the event in 19th (and last) place out of the 37 starters. Coming down out of the mountains and fog, we were delighted to see a Ford van parked in a turnout with a homemade banner on the back that read &amp;quot;Tom Bryant Fan Club.&amp;quot; I knew right away I would be buying breakfast at the finish for my niece and nephew and their parents who had come out from the Denver area to catch the action.   It&amp;#039;s funny how escapades like that stick with you forever, and can be brought back to the surface vividly when you get into a similar type of car. Both the Mitsubishi and the Subaru in our test have considerably more power than our Datsun rally car and are equipped with all sorts of electronic wonders to enhance traction and control. But cars that have rally heritage built into them all have a similar feel that makes you think, &amp;quot;Just watch me \u2014 I can go anywhere!&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a14002/memories-of-scca-rally/>