I saw this trailer of Drift Tengoku yesterday:

I was really amazed that drifting with an automatic is that easy!

Basically the technique behind drifting is very possible with an automatic: by limiting the automatic to go a gear up it will always keep the gearbox in the same gear (unless your revs go under something like 3000rpm) so the automatic becomes a bit manual this way. The only trouble is to prevent hitting Drive or Reverse accidentally but as you can see in this video they use a lock to prevent you from doing that.

Of course there are some techniques which are not possible: for instance a drift at high speed doing a clutch kick or controlling the drift with the clutch while going sideways. But who cares if you can’t Manji that easy with an automatic!

So there is still hope for my Carina! However… I do need some extra power first and I only have a 3 speed automatic, so shifting between 2nd and 3rd may be a bit far from each other. Think I’ll stick to the original plan then. ;)