In the span of four years, the CSF Evo X has gone through a tremendous transformation. Purchased by CSF at the end of 2016, it went from a crashed Pirelli World Challenge car long forgotten and collecting dust at the back of GMG Racing, to being one of SEMA 2017’s stand-out builds. The media buzz circling the “World’s Best Evo X Ever Built” going into 2018 catapulted the car to three top magazine covers, numerous online features, and an episode on season two of Hoonigan’s Build Biology Series.
The momentum continued into 2019 as MotoIQ and CSF decided to transform the car into a serious and legitimate race car. A brief one event stint at Shift Sector in April 2019 (with Version 1.5 of the build) was fun, but was also enough to realize the true potential of this car, and how it could really excel. The team decided to focus the future of the car on being competitive in Unlimited Class of the Global Time Attack series. Serious fabrication and re-engineering of the car commenced in May 2019 with the goal to make it to last year’s GTA Finals in November 2019 (with Version 2.0).
An immense amount of time, effort, and resources from a handful of the best partners in the industry from Southern California made competing in this event a huge accomplishment for everyone involved in the build. Unfortunately, this day, the car suffered an engine fire caused from a fuel leak. With professional driver Michael Essa behind the wheel, the fire was put out in a timely manner – but still caused quite a lot of destruction.
With tens of thousands of dollars up in flames, this was extremely disheartening for everyone involved – we were unsure how to, or if we even should, move forward with rebuilding the car. But after about four months of it sitting, we decided to continue in full force with “Version 3.0” of the build to make the car better than ever before. No expenses spared, and no corners cut.
We enlisted the help of many of the previous build partners, including;
- Brian at Afterhours Composite Works to do major interior fabrication and rear aero
- The team at MotoIQ for the engine build, all new parts installation, assembly, project management, and continued efforts as leaders of the CSF race program
- LTMW for body and paintwork
- Ryan at Rywire for expert re-wiring of the engine harness that had burnt down and new plumbing
- And more
Soon after the decision to move forward, the depressing vibe was gone – and the excitement was back. We reached out to some of our favorite industry media creators to cover the rebuild, so that we could share the highlights of the story with everyone.
- Documentary Style Videos by RJ at FrshMedia (IG: @frsh.media / @bred_x)
- Photography by Darrien (IG: @_crvn_)
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