Aaaa VR4! ... One of my dream cars at the time. I'm a bit jealous. Sucker was way out of my reach back then. I have never actually driven one. Recently, I started seeing a few around town. Very odd. I had a turbo Eclipse of that era(Gen 2), but not the AWD. Damn, Mitsu use to make some fun cars. Now they just slap "Eclipse" name on an SUV and call it a day. Sad
The VR4 was a dream car of mine in high school, and I bought mine in the winter of 2010 (when I was 25). At that point the car was 17 years old. I sold it in the winter of 2015, almost exactly 5 years later, and put something on the order of 50k miles on it. I'll give you some realism to go with it.
The car really was neat in a lot of ways. It was comfortable, good for putting lots of miles on, had good baggage space (especially with the fold-down 2nd row seats). And of course, it was fast. At 17 years old and 130k miles it needed basically a new everything. The car wasn't engineered to go 200k or more with that level of horsepower, and it had a lot of wear points over time. So new engine mounts and transmission mounts, new hoses, new driveshafts, transmission started getting sloppy... I replaced basically every component on the car. The intercoolers had gotten beaten up so I put on a big front-mount, the turbos were old and starting to smoke (replaced those). The driveshaft U-joints got old so I put in a carbon fiber 1-piece driveshaft instead of the factory 3-piece. Motor mounts were completely shot and I put in polyurethane.
The car had poor sound insulation and I put 2 layers of Dynamat in pretty much the whole thing, and it needed a 3rd, but I didn't get to it. I had a hard time hitting a balance with the exhaust of loud enough to sound aggressive but quiet enough to not drive me nuts.
The car never felt particularly tight, even after doing literally everything I could to make it better. The drivetrain, being AWD and just having enough points where there could be play, just always had some play in it which you felt when driving. The car had a lot of systems in it that were unnecessary and that I ended up getting rid of over time.
Really it was a car that was at the pinnacle of 90s "We can do it, we have the technology, so let's do it whether or not there's any good reason to", and I always felt it was a car that was based on the same platform as a Diamante or some other low-performance vehicle, but then had extras bolted onto it to make the extra power. As a result, to me it never felt "purpose built". Really, my mission for it in PA (being able to handle snowy, unplowed mountain roads with studded snow tires) was the perfect job for that car. Anything beyond that, not so much. But I did learn a lot with the things I did with it. I played around with cam timing using adjustable cam gears, I played around with the turbos quite a bit, and did a lot of little changes to make the car what I wanted.
Still, I want my Cobra replica, or something like that. Factory Five is appealing. Maybe if I ever get the Ford 9N engine rebuilt and that tractor out of my garage.
. When everything is covered in snow, these part time 4wd with Lo and locked front end are awesome! But the problem with these systems is that you cannot use them in changing conditions on the road. And that's what we get here. If the road is slippery in one place and dry in another, you are in for a very interesting drive if you put it in 4wd. Push much? Or a nice bill for broken axles if you keep doing it. So, most of the time you are left driving a pretty unsophisticated RWD vehicle with very light rear end. Entertaining for sure 
All the fun of the VR4 (no AWD, but added 4-wheel steering). Runs like a sewing machine and won’t break a sweat at 150K.