When the F-117 was first unveiled, many people were convinced that there were those in the military who had really gone around the bend and had taken several zillion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money with them.  Didn’t they know that really fast airplanes—or really fast anythings, for that matter—are supposed to be sharp, sleek and generally swoopy?  And there was the F-117, all flat and angular, sort of like something someone would have designed with an erector set rather than CATIA.  Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim in Bilbao looks more airworthy than the F-117.  Yet somehow that stealth fighter has proven itself by more than aeronautical theory.

Still, there is that niggling notion that “fast” is synonymous with “sharp, sleek and swoopy.”

Think of a fast car.  A Corvette Z06.  A Ferrari 430.  Their shapes fit the bill.  They look fast.  They are fast.  And in the wrong—or maybe right—hands they are a raft of tickets waiting to arrive.  While that is the probable fault of the driver, not the car, unquestionably the physical presence of those vehicles are complicit in the infractions from the perspective that their appearance, fulfilling the requisite requirements of “fast” are there is spades.  (And face it: the ace of spades is sharp, sleek and swoopy.)  Those cars scream: “Ticket me!”

Which brings us to the Mitsubishi Evo.  This car is like an F-117.  Planes and angles, not the S3 of actual and ostensible fast cars.  It has an engaging homeliness.  It has four doors.  If it didn’t have a giant spoiler (presumably attached to keep it from taking flight), one might mistake it for some innocuous econobox.

Big mistake.  As big a mistake as those bad guys who doubted the potency of the F-117.

The Evo is equipped with a 286-hp engine.  A two-liter four.  Oh, then there are the afterburners—I mean twin scroll turbocharger.  An active center differential helps put the consequent power to the appropriate wheels, which is a good thing when performing evasive maneuvers, er, cornering.  There is—and this time I am not making it up—a “Vortex Generator” that directs air to that massive rear wing: swoosh!  The Evo features 17 x 8-in. aluminum wheels wrapped with Yokohama 235/45 R17 93W rubber, and there are ventilated Brembo brakes all around to keep those wheels from turning.

No, it doesn’t have the looks of the sharp, sleek and swoopy.  But all too often, beauty is only skin deep.  And performance matters.