If this isn't the ultimate daily-driven EVO VIII, it's damn close. Owner Al Friedman is a lawyer who has morphed in a way that would impress the Incredible Hulk. Al has gone from addressing the laws of the land to addressing the laws of physics.
The initiator of this sweeping conversion is a particular combination of all-wheel drive and a turbocharger. Al was first drawn in by the Subaru WRX; then the Mitsubishi EVO VIII hit the scene and it was over. Enthralled, Al went from interested enthusiast to AWD groupie to AWD techie, and then into the EVO business-ECU tuning.
"After law school, I started to drive European luxury cars like the M5, " says Al. "I had an SL600 for a while. I used to work on them a bit, doing the usual bolt-ons like exhausts and intakes with chips. One day I was driving down the road and I saw a most unusual looking car-the new WRX.
"The moment I saw the WRX, something clicked in my head and I immediately got rid of my SL600 and went to the better-handling, sportier WRX. I remember telling the sales guy at the Subaru place 'Man, this would be an amazing car with another 50 hp.' One thing led to another and for two years I spent almost every single spare moment modifying my WRX. If I wasn't driving it, wrenching it or racing it at autocrosses or drag races, I was on the Internet talking about it. It became my life; I was hooked big time on turbo AWD cars and I got into the car scene.
"I decided to convert my WRX to a full JDM STi C-spec drivetrain and engine swap and try to win the championship of the fastest WRX in the United States. At that point, I got into some serious engine management issues and ECU wiring fiascos and spent the better part of six months learning to wire and tune a stand-alone ECU. I soon realized that tuning was my favorite thing to do and I spent long nights-sometimes all night-driving up and down the interstate learning to make my WRX faster and run better. I won the first annual Subaru East Coast Shootout with an 11.88 at 124 mph and to this day, my trap speed is one of the fastest ever recorded for a street-driven Subaru in the United States."
When the EVO came out, Al's desire for tuning really went off the deep end. He realized that he enjoyed modifying cars more than anything else and started to offer his services as a tuner for hire; first with A'PEXi S-AFC's and doing installs of boost controllers and cams when the EVO first came out.
"From the first day the EVO was released, I've been tearing mine apart and putting it back together almost constantly, trying to refine it and modify it to meet my vision of the ultimate road car. After a lot of trial and error with my own EVO, I realized that reflashing the ECU was an effective and powerful tuning solution for the 4G63. I decided to make the jump into the tuning world and offer some basic re-flashed EVO ECUs under the Dyno Flash banner.
"After word spread of the good results we were getting with the reflashes I started getting busier. The more business I got, the less time I had for my first career-law-and the less interest I had in working in it. In the past nine months, I've been to Miami, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Baltimore, D.C., L.A., Indy, Chicago, Ohio, and Tennessee; not to mention many weekends of drag racing my own car. I now do this full time.
"After I developed a good understanding of the EVO and created a huge library of base maps for various modification combinations, Dyno Flash started to offer through-the-mail customized reflashes that match the mods of the particular customer's car at a very reasonable price of $199.99. We have had huge success with this product and it's on a lot of EVOs out there.