Category: drifting (Page 1 of 2)

Video Option covering drifting in 1992

December 21, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

A long long time ago drifting was not a popular sport and Keiichi Tsuchiya wasn’t in every Video Option, Hot Version or Drift Tengoku episode you could find! Even covering the drift scene was quite rare! However in those early days Video Option was actually one of the few to cover that scene at all!

The following video from 1992 covers the street drifting, organized drifting and even a few of the “bloopers”:

Amazing! Nobody would even think about using a Nissan Skyline GC110 for drifting nowadays! They are simply worth too much and they are almost as rare as a KPGC10 nowadays! Imagine what people will think in 15 years of us using Skyline R32s and Toyota AE86es for drifing! ;)

What Keiichi Tsuchiya did do was being a judge in drift competitions! This second part covers the Fukuoka National Racing competition:

Amazing! Keiichi Tsuchiya was, just like Daijiro Inada, young back then! :D

It is funny to see him freak out on a Nissan Silvia S13 locking up the rear wheels with the handbrake and drift through the corner at 20 km/h! Imagine that the current slowmotion replays of the D1GP have quicker cornering than that! :D

Of course I do understand that back then the skill mattered more than entry speed. Looking at the result of that match the AE86 did win fair and square!

Rice paddy crop art

July 13, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

I found this picture of rice paddy crop art on Pink Tentacle’s blog:

Is this minivan really drifting?

I wasn’t really looking at the rice paddy crop art: I was immediately looking at the minivan! First few seconds I thought it was drifting! :D

Of course it is an optical illusion: the wide angle lens makes the straight road at the bottom shaped like a bend and the minivan is actually reverse parking at the bottom of the picture!

Rice paddy crop art: plant different colored rice plants in a pattern

Rice paddy crop art: plant different colored rice plants in a pattern
About the rice paddy crop art, it is nothing more than planting differently colored rice plants and wait for the result to grow. It is the same as we do in Holland with the tulip bulbs. ;)

Is the BMW E30 a predator?

July 4, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

Wreckedmagazine posted this small clip of a BMW 3 series almost hitting the cameraman:
Drifting BMW Almost Hits Cameraman at Clipping Point

It kind of reminded me of this:

Was this the first attempt of that BMW to become a man-eating machine?

Tokyo Matter (Cars)

May 5, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

I saw this movie posted on Twitter by Chris Rhoads today. On one side you can see it as a spoof on Tokyo Drift, on the other side you can see it as “hopping on the bandwagon” for Cars:

It is still quite entertaining, especially guessing on which models the cars are based. My best guess is that the blue Japanese saloon is supposed to be a Crown S120 or S130 and the bad guy a Silvia S15. I also did spot a few bosozoku/dekotora like styled vans. Funny to see all the Police cars are modern Crowns! ;)

5th gear on drifting

April 23, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

I’ve become a bit of a 5th gear fan since Discovery Channel is broadcasting it around “just got out of work” time in the Netherlands. So I was just watching a few videos on drifting by 5th gear.

Just compare these two videos by 5th gear:

And this one:

I suspect the first video is dated from somewhere near 2002 or 2003 and the second video is dated from 2007. Just look how much drifting has changed in those 4 or 5 years! The winning car of the first video would have been blown away by the Soarer Tiff Needell is driving in 2007!

Hashiriya Exports on D1GP

April 5, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

Hashiriya Exports hit the nail on the head in their rant against D1GP. I think this small citation is the core of the blog item:

Your car is all ready, you have paid the ridiculous 70,000 yen entry fee again, the truck is loaded and everything is packed, you just got off the phone to your new tire sponsor, this year Yokohama who are happy to have you on board but did they forget to mention that you will never ever have a chance of wining D1 because of their main tire competitor Goodyear. Goodyear is one of the D1GP’s main sponsors who will always have the last say in who wins, thank the King for the that. You happen to being doing flawless runs but yet the Goodyear backed big guns still manage to score more points then you every run without fail, you can also thank the King for that.

I do have to agree for a great deal with them: we all saw D1GP changing over the year and getting to a much more “professional” level each season. D1GP is starting to get more and more criticism lately which is mainly due to the sport growing in such rapid way.

The whole D1GP circus is starting to look more and more like an insiders only circus for which we, the outsiders, are allowed to pay a great deal in entry tickets, magazines, videos and merchandising. Apparently we are not allowed to share the fun with them, however once in a while the clown (Nomuken) is asking some volunteer to go along in his act and he shows you can be as big a clown as he is!
BTW: don’t get me wrong here: Kazama, Tsuchiya, Inada and Nomuken are still my heroes!

D1GP going sideways or downward?
Of course we still have Formula D, Prodrift and several other bigger series but the question is how long it will take till those series have the same kind of trouble as D1GP is in?

Well, maybe it is the same as with the Formula One: the larger audience likes it anyway as long as there is enough action. Only the enthusiasts are complaining…