By Easter 2017, I have to submit a project at school. I get a whole year to work on it and I’ve chosen to build a drift car for my project. ‘Drift project‘ is ‘Dorifutopurojekuto’ in Japanese.
Initiating Drift
I’ve been into cars since I got given my first toy car, aged 2. It was a multicoloured car transporter which spoke Spanish! Eventually I got into Japanese cars and drifting, which inspired me to start my own racing project – I’m really excited about this.
I’ve been to a couple of TRAX events before, which were focused on the custom part of the car scene, but recently I’ve been to Drift Matsuri which was a less showy event and a much bigger insight into grass roots drifting. The cars ranged from a banged-up BMW to a high-performance twin-turbo Mazda. Everyone was really friendly and it didn’t matter if you had a £500 car or a £50,000 car, you could still race.
It was very inspiring – I got to talk to one of the drivers from the SlipWheel drift team, Sean Malone. He reassured me in getting an RX-8, which I’ve been thinking about for a while. I also got a ride in a drift car with Belinda Challis from DriftHer in an R32 Skyline – it was really exhilarating and drifting is a lot faster than it looks!
Ignition Sequence
So far, I’ve concluded that a Mazda RX-8 is the best car for me – they are cheap, powerful and basically ready to run, apart from a welded diff. The car will ideally cost about £500 and welding the diff will be around £80. Obviously there will be lots of costs on top of this, which I’ll work out and fund (somehow!).
Slipwheel RX-8 by Sean Malone
After finding the right car and working out how much it will cost overall, the next step in my project is fundraising – I need enough money to purchase the car and everything else it will need. So watch this space – here I go…
Any tips, advice or general inspiration will be greatly appreciated – please leave your comments below.