MITSUBISHI EVO IX: The pea-soup fog has descended on the Brutingthorpe proving track - an old airstrip between Birmingham and Leicester. You can hardly see the nose in front of your face, but there's a wind gathering and predictions are that the 2 ½ mile track will be clear within the hour.
That's just enough time to take the new Evo IX for a little run on the local country roads. One problem with these cars is that, as their looks suggest, they are effectively road-going rally cars. The end result is a ride that would delight your dentist; you can nearly feel your fillings coming loose with every bump.
The Evo offers no compromise on its rally heritage - you have only to look at the massive spoiler on the back to realise that. Yet, it's immensely co-operative on the public roads and can quietly cruise through country villages well within the speed limits. Pulling away there's a noticeable turbo lag, then the throaty growl as it kicks in.
For everyday living there are some downsides, of course. Not least is the ironing board hanging off the boot-lid that acts as a beckoning call to every yob on the road to take you on at traffic lights.
Perhaps the most practical problems are an unreadable speedometer - not the sort of thing you want on a car that manages to get to 100km/h before you even notice it. Then there's the radio. Mitsubishi has long made it its business to offer radios that would not look out of place at any gathering of Pimp My Ride fans.
Again the radio features a graphic equaliser you'd normally find on a Gameboy. Impressive, but with one minor flaw - in the entire day we spent with the cars no one at the track - not even the people from Mitsubishi - could figure out how to turn it on. These are people who know the inner workings of suspension struts. Yet you still can't get the radio on.
These sort of things aren't deal breakers on a car like this, but it would have severely curtailed our enthusiasm for the Evo if the fog hadn't lifted.
Track open and we were off, throwing the car into corners, letting it run to redline. Track days can be tedious in the wrong car, but this was addictive. The Evo was born to run in this way. That's why the others gathering at the track were all owners in their own cars.
The new Evo IX has several minor tweaks, but the only one that matters is 20 extra horses under the bonnet. With prices up by €1,500, that's roughly €75 a horse. Good value when you look at it this way: you wouldn't even get a nag at Ballinasloe horse fair for that.
The power output is now 280bhp. Just to remind everyone, that's from a four-cylinder 2-litre engine, not some six-cylinder monster. It's an incredible engineering feat. And that's just the start; if you want you can opt for the FQ340, which offers - as you can probably guess - 340bhp.
Then there's the tuning sub-culture. One owner enjoying his track day had managed to get 400bhp out of his FQ, with a little help from a friend with a laptop. While the Mitsubishi warranty department will no doubt disown him, he had the expression of an eight-year-old on Christmas morning after every set of laps.
In the tight twisting chicane, the rear swings ever so slightly out of line - even with the four-wheel-drive system in full flow, but there's loads of signals and unlike the average supercar, understeer doesn't arrive in one big bolt but rather in a steady flow, allowing you to use it to your advantage and swing around the corners.
It's hilarious fun to drive. Yet off track and again it tootles along like a regular saloon, albeit dressed like a samurai and gurgling like a rally car.
It's about as subtle as a smack in the mouth, and if you did drive one into the company car park, you'd probably be marked down by colleagues as something of a yob, but if you enjoy driving and don't care what your co-workers think, then you'd be hard-pushed to find more fun. All you need is an airfield and a good friend in the tyre business.
At €51,495, it's a relatively affordable racer, though insurance will undoubtedly hit your pocket a lot harder than your regular executive car, and neighbours won't let you do the school run. See, every cloud has a silver lining.
SUBARU IMPREZA:
The Scooby has become something of an icon and, for good or ill, has come to define the Subaru brand in Ireland and Britain. Yet there's so much more to Subaru than the aggressive styling of the Imprezas. They also offer some really good buys, like the Forrester, Outlander and Legacy.
Sadly, styling has never been their forte. It's an engineering company run with one thing in mind, to better the performance. Talk of smart styling or sleek lines leaves them cold.
The upside is some seriously good models that offer rock solid reliability.
The downside is that even in this facelifted version, the look could never be described as pretty. The new nose job might sharpen the image, but it's unlikely to send passers-by swooning to the footpath.
At base level, without the loud bodykit, it looks plain and dull. Regular models feature soft suspension and light steering, that bear no real relationship with the range-topping versions.
That difference has been increased with the introduction of new larger 2.5-litre turbocharged engines at the top-end, and a new engine for the 2-litre version.
The big news is that while the STI gets the new bigger engine, a detuned version also features in the WRX version.
So while the STI remains at 276bhp, torque is up by 14 per cent to 392Nm, while in the WRX, output is now 227bhp.
As usual the STI range-topper comes complete with enormous tail spoiler and a look that threatens to beat up every other car on the road. It's raw, the closest many of us will get to actually driving a fully-fledged rally car. As a result it's always eager to run. Potter around in traffic and you can feel the car chomping at the bit.
Our test route mixed some town driving with a cliff-side run before taking into a forest on a trek no wider than the car and surfaced in a similar style to Irish back roads.
The end result was a bumpy, jitterish run through the forest with every pothole and bump passed through the tyres, steering column and seats right up the spinal cord.
In short, the STI is for the complete devotee, but those who like a little compromise to comfort should look to the WRX version. The second car we took on the test, it might be slightly less powerful, but it feels a lot more controllable in the corners and yet it still packs plenty of punch.
The new 2.5-litre unit offers a flexibility that makes it a far easier car to drive, especially at low speed and in the low- to mid-range band.
It may lack some of the extreme body panelling, but in the end it was a much more enjoyable package to drive. It just feels better balanced for amateur motorists tempted to hit the track every now and then.
It's great to get the chance to drive an STI, but if we had to spend a week in either or even were lucky enough to be able to make the choice of ownership, we'd be grabbing for the keys of the WRX. That may mean we're less "hardcore" than others, but when it comes to a wet winter morning and the run down the country road, then the WRX is that more forgiving.