Your thoughts on drifting in the US, American cars...

[Boost-n-Juice]

With the big dogs in Detroit showing an interest in the new and upcoming drifting scene in the US, what are your thoughts?

 

Ford Motorsports has a car, Pontiac recently sponsored the GTO driven by Dan Millanand I'm sure Dodge has something in the works.

 

I personally think drifting is pretty cool and would probably spend at most $10 to go watch a local event. However, the problem I have is the look of the cars Pontiac and Ford put out, call it Rice or whatever you want. I think we should stick to our American Muscle car looks, ditch the goofy graphics and the park bench style wings.

[Rotarded1647545491]

My thoughts?

 

IMO, it's kinda cool to watch and it probably if fun as hell to do, BUT.....

 

It scares the everlovin shit outta me to think that this "craze" is catching on with relatively young and ineperienced drivers who will purchase 10+ year old RWD cars and go out on public streets and do this.

 

Even if the driver, the car, curbs, fire hydrants, light poles, and buildings survive this, you end up having a vehicle driving normally on public roads with unsafe tires.

 

Now, some will argue that "street racing" is just as bad. I see the point, but digress. The pure and simple fact is that "drifting" is intentionally losing lateral traction while attempting to control a car in multiple and continuous high-speed slides, leaving the inevitable out-of-control slide.

 

What the most common mistake of the "inexperienced" racer? I'd say a mis-shift?

 

What the most common mistake of an "inexperienced" drifter? I'd say losing control of the vehicle?

 

JUST MY OPINION!

[Kuruma]

I own an AE86, and actually know what it is, so yeah, I like to drift. I But I know drifting isn't the only driving technique out there, so I personally try to get good at various styles of driving. smile.gif

 

edit- and yeah, I try to keep the drifting limited to *PARKING LOTS*, or 3AM-4AM in areas where traffic is *non existant* if I'm actually going to do it on the streets. If nothing else, seeing a car do that is going to scare the shit outta nearby drivers who just drive for transportation, which can lead to an accident. street drifting around people = bad.

[Brandon]

Drifting is interesting, but its a judged event, so im not sure about the whole thing, I mean its like figure skating for cars

[Kuruma]

Originally posted by B:

Drifting is interesting, but its a judged event, so im not sure about the whole thing, I mean its like figure skating for cars

As a sport it's a judged event, however, it has some other applications too. Go watch Drift Bible (an instructional video with Keiichi Tsuchiya as the driver), and it demonstrates different styles of drift, in different cars, from a couple silvias, an AE86 Levin, and even the MR2. At the end he shows the difference between show-off drifting, and drifting for faster speeds on a track. It's not all "figure skating" and judged events

[Kuruma]

Heh. Circle track or drifting, I don't care what it is. If I've got a car that's up to the task, I'm not afraid to do it, and if I feel the car can be competitive with someone else's, I'll go up against them. smile.gif BTW, speaking of drifting and 86es, did I accidentally leave the lug wrench from my (temporarily immobile) 86 over there?

[Drunkendubber]

Drifting is for ricers, real rednecks powerslide

[AngryBMW]

Originally posted by Drunkendubber:

Drifting is for ricers, real rednecks powerslide

Wanna ride in the cark?

-Marc

[Kuruma]

Whoops... And I found out I left it somewhere when a tire had popped. Guess you were more then right about that tire when you said it looked bad smile.gif

[Dave1647545494]

Originally posted by MadMalibu:

Wanna ride in the cark?

-Marc

who's gonna push it for you?

[OGRE]

Originally posted by Kuruma:

As a sport it's a judged event, . . .

IMO it's not a sport, any competition that is judged for style, degree of difficulty ect. is NOT a sport. The only exception that comes to mind is boxing, which there aren't style points and judges don't matter if you knock the other guy out.

 

to answer the initial question, it's thier cars they can do what they want to,

[Nitrousbird]

I'm sorry, but drifting is nothing but a ricer trend. Just because Jack-lkjsadflkjdaflkj Kuma-wlkjnekljsjl does it 2000 miles from here doesn't mean shit to me. Show me any racing event (be it Nascar, F1, CART, IRL, Trans Am, GT Cup, etc.) where drifting is part of their racing. Sure, maybe in rally where they are running on dirt roads, but that's not exactly comparable, now is it??

[Kuruma]

Originally posted by mesteno:

IMO it's not a sport, any competition that is judged for style, degree of difficulty ect. is NOT a sport...

(Note: Please don't take this as sarcasm, it's not. I don't agree with you, but I do respect you until you do something to make me lose that respect.)

 

While I understand and respect your opinion, according to Merriam Webster's online dictionary, located at www.m-w.com, A "sport" is:

 

*cut for brevity*

1 a : a source of diversion : RECREATION b : sexual play c (1) : physical activity engaged in for pleasure (2) : a particular activity (as an athletic game) so engaged in

 

We can both agree after analyzing that definition that Drifting in general *does* fit the definition of the word.

 

It's not a sport for everyone, though, and to each their own. Personally, I'm not too interested in going up against others in a style competition, I've got nobody but myself to impress. However, if it can be done with a car, I want to be able to say "Yeah, I can do that.". The reason I learned to drift is the same reason I learned to power slide in the Neon, and same reason I bought a car with a standard transmission this time instead of another automatic. You probably won't see me doing it when I'm actually driving seriously, because it's *slow*. Grip = faster in most circumstances.

 

Originally posted by Nitrousbird:

I'm sorry, but drifting is nothing but a ricer trend. Just because Jack-lkjsadflkjdaflkj Kuma-wlkjnekljsjl does it 2000 miles from here doesn't mean shit to me. Show me any racing event (be it Nascar, F1, CART, IRL, Trans Am, GT Cup, etc.) where drifting is part of their racing. Sure, maybe in rally where they are running on dirt roads, but that's not exactly comparable, now is it??

The thing about trends is that the people following them to be part of a crowd always find another trend to do, and the people left behind are either the ones who were already doing it before the boom, and the ones who actually had a legit interest in whatever the trend was, automotive or otherwise. The "ricers" will give up on drifting after they smash up enough body kits, pop enough tires/scrape the curb enough while drifting to fuck up those nice rims, and curb check enough times to smash up those expensive neon ground effects. Then they'll just find something else to do like going back to making their cars look like they pissed off a bunch of hippies on some bomb ass kind.

[BiG BeN]

i'de be interested enough to try some events if i had another car(beater) i'm not about to go tear up my 240 doin that stuff though.

[Berto]

Originally posted by Rotarded:

 

Even if the driver, the car, curbs, fire hydrants, light poles, and buildings survive this, you end up having a vehicle driving normally on public roads with unsafe tires.

 

uhhh

Guess you were more then right about that tire when you said it looked bad

point made? maybe?

[Mowgli1647545497]

Drifting only exists here because kids did it on GranTurismo before they turned 16.

[Kuruma]

Not really. The tire did not pop simply because I was drifting, it popped because it was old as fuck, and I overestimated how much time said tire had left. I thought it would last me until the 23rd, and I was sadly mistaken, so now I get to buy a new brake hose and tire. Live and learn. If anything, the real douchebag thing I did was trusting the tires on a car that recently belonged to a person who wondered why the clutch wasn't working too well for her when she didn't have any fluid at all in the resovoir, and didn't notice that the carb preheater hose had disentigrated on her, and was laying in pieces at the bottom of the engine bay.

 

If you compare my driving style in the 86 to the kind of things I used to be able to make my Neon do, I was actually being rather conservative and keeping the sliding about mostly to rainy days after the rain stopped, when the streets and parking lots in question had that nice soggy but not flooded feeling to them. An SR5 is not exactly as easy to drift on a dry surface as it's big brother, the Corolla GT-S (No LSD, weaker engine, wet noodle-like suspension)

 

Seeing as I only got the car on 10/7, and adding to that the fact that I wasn't about to attempt a drift for the first few weeks as getting used to RWD and shifting my own gears had to come before I could begin to think of making the car go sideways, I don't believe the kind of wear that was seen was caused by drifting occasionally, but much of it was likely to be pre-existing wear that I simply failed to notice. Caveat emptor.

[OGRE]

Originally posted by mesteno:

IMO

in my opinion.

 

Originally posted by Kuruma:

...

It's my opinion, and opinions cannot be argued.

[RedRocket1647545505]

haha! funny you should mention this. My friend tried to 'drift' his RWD car the the other day, and NAILED a 1.5' tall boulder. Totally fucking up his rocker panel and taking his passenger rear tire, and bending the suspension so that the tire is pressed against the rear inner fender. I had to go pick him up because the car was barely driveable. I think the suspension might be fixable, but I see no way to get that dent out of the rocker panel. It amazingly did no damage to the door, so I think he said he's gonna put sideskirts on it now to cover it up. I'd hope he learned his lesson, but I from the way he talked, I don't think he did.

[Rotarded1647545491]

The pure and simple fact is that "drifting" is intentionally losing lateral traction while attempting to control a car in multiple and continuous high-speed slides, leaving the inevitable out-of-control slide.

 

What the most common mistake of an "inexperienced" drifter? I'd say losing control of the vehicle?

.

 

 

Originally posted by AustinL911:

haha! funny you should mention this. My friend tried to 'drift' his RWD car the the other day, and NAILED a 1.5' tall boulder. Totally fucking up his rocker panel and taking his passenger rear tire, and bending the suspension so that the tire is pressed against the rear inner fender.

point made....again

[Wease]

"Drifting" is another excuse that Ricers use when they get their ass handed to them on the street. As in "My car isn't built for drag racing, yo. It's built for drifting." At this point I've lost interest and decided not to remind him that he's driving a FWD Civic...

[BloodRed]

Originally posted by BC:

I'm sure Dodge has something in the works.

They do, they have a Mopar sponsered Viper that I believe won this year or some compatition I just remember reading about it.

[Brandon]

Originally posted by Nitrousbird:

I'm sorry, but drifting is nothing but a ricer trend. Just because Jack-lkjsadflkjdaflkj Kuma-wlkjnekljsjl does it 2000 miles from here doesn't mean shit to me. Show me any racing event (be it Nascar, F1, CART, IRL, Trans Am, GT Cup, etc.) where drifting is part of their racing. Sure, maybe in rally where they are running on dirt roads, but that's not exactly comparable, now is it??

hater

[Kuruma]

Originally posted by mesteno:

in my opinion.

 

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Kuruma:

...

It's my opinion, and opinions cannot be argued.</font>Despite the general distaste I have for them, I am more then familiar with the meanings of common internet acronyms, having wasted the past 20 years on computers.

 

Since you have missed the point, I will clarify things a bit. I couldn't possibly care one iota less about changing your opinion on what a sport is. Such an attempt is not worth my time, and I have better things to do then to waste my time trying to influence the opinions of a person I have no contact with at this point in time outside of an internet forum.

 

The presence of the aforementioned acronym does not change the general tone your post gives off of trying to chastise me for using the word in a manner contradictory to your personal tastes in entertainment, despite said usage being perfectly in line with the definition of the word as it is found in the dictionary considered by most to be the final word on the english language. That is all. No more, no less. If that is not how you meant it, then consider it dropped. I'm in a bad mood today, and I may misinterpret things.

[Guest Rane]

Face it, other things are fun then driving straight. Once you get used to that and Realize Auto X is fun Drifting is fun(While I agree and judging is gay, guess what if you join a drift competition you get to drift LEGALLY!!! IN A SAFE INVIROMENT!!! Where you can push your car harder with less to worry bout.)