Drifting

[bland]

I'm just wondering what car would all of you consider to be the one that started making the whole drift seen popular, and which car you consider to be the first true drift car...

[Cyberkreig]

Question would probably be better answered by some 30 year old japanese guys. It clearly had to be RWD, affordable and available in japan. Drifiting was probably discovered by accident one rainy night in the japanese mountains. Either an early RX7 or the AE86. Certainly the AE86 was the car to make it popular. Any J-residents wanna comment?

[driftaholic]

one of my mom's old boyfriends in the 60's used to drift a volvo 1800 (in the US), so i know drifting started before that.

[cory]

yeah must have been way before ae86! way back. well i bet it happened as soon as trucks had enough torque to spin wheels in the dirt. i know i drift in my dad's 4.3L gmc 1500. and it's slow. i bet kids did it when their parents where gone back in the fourties

[Cyberkreig]

now wait, are we talking about off-road rallys, fish-tailing or true sideways BEFORE the curve dry asphault drift? Honestly i dont know when or where drifting came from... But i'll stick to my guns that the AE86 made it 'popular'

[NISMOdrift240]

drifting originated back when they used to race up and down the mountain roads in japan. they were curvy, windy roads. eventually, they got faster and faster to where they *** end of the cars were swinging out, and then they got to see how crazy theyd get. then it progressed to driving down the mountain roads, drifting as we know it today. crews would compete against each other, hence, drifting competitions today in japan. this was back in hachi roku days. hachi roke, or silvia are cult classic drifint cars, thats why you cant find em now.........sorry, not a know it all, just a drifting freak.

[midwestdrifter]

yeah i would agree with the 86, it made it popular. i would have one, but i found a 240 for 2 grand.

[issanni]

i know i drift in my dad's 4.3L gmc 1500. and it's slow.

You're probably just powersliding which is not drifting. Drifting involves weight transfer and/or more than one corner. Kicking the tail out around a curve technically is not drifting. Although there is a technique called "power over" which I don't think is considered drifting. My definition of drifting is precise weight transfer to induce and maintain an oversteer situation with opposite lock and precise brake and throttle application through one or more curves. But I could be wrong and you might be handling your dad's truck just like Koguchi-san. I just don't like it when people confuse powersliding for drifting. And although mountain pass drifting became quite popular with the Initial D series, things like that do not happen, at least that's what I'm told by people who live and race in Japan. Drifting is more popular on the track and not the mountain passes in Japan. The type of racing you typically see on the mountain passes in Japan is Touge, which is a form of cat and mouse chase to see if the person following can catch up to the person in front by a certain point, but I could be wrong If you ask me, I think "drifting" began in the rally world where traction was at a minimum and they had to find ways to take curves and chicanes at speed. If you analyze the different techniques that a rally driver and a drift driver use, they are almost exactly the same.

[cory]

eh. well i'm not sure. i just cruise around in the truck slide the tail end out alot. pretty much to the point of 70 degrees to road and bring it back around. also i f@ck around in the school parking lot and slide the tail out and do 360's. well i'm sure it doesn't look as good as the way japan or some of you do it but that's pretty much drifting to me since i don't have a real car to do it in. or a track that allows drifting within 175 miles. my deffinition i'm sure is wrong compared to yall's

[Cyberkreig]

issanni - Good definition I think that should clear up what 'drifting' is for alot of people. While I agree that Inital D isnt a good representation of the 'sport' (probably because its a cartoon, and nothing mainstream is indictive of what created it) I would still be willing to bet that it is based on some truth.

[issanni]

i think Initial D is just an exageration of 'touge' racing which is done in mountain passes. i have a best motoring vcd where they are explaining the details of touge, but i couldn't really understand them since i can't read or speak japanese. but from what i gather, it's almost like a cat and mouse chase through mountain passes...very similar to initial D, except there's no passing. i think they even had something like this in Initial D, but i don't remember who takumi was racing in that episode. all i remember was they were going back and forth up and down a mountain pass and no one was passing. i think it was more of an endurance thing to see how long they could keep up with each other.

[driftaholic]

i grilled my mom hard about the details and she said her old boyfriend was indeed breaking tranction with all four wheels. not just power sliding.

literal definition of "touge" is "mountain pass," not a specific kind of racing

[issanni]

hehe..'touge' was the only word that was spelled with english characters in that best motoring vcd i mentioned, that's why i associated it with that type of racing and i've heard it thrown around from time to time in discussions about mountain pass racing. so now it makes more sense, but as far as i know the type of racing that takes place in mountain passes is that cat and mouse chase type, whatever it's called

[driftaholic]

seems knowing japanese gives me an advantage sometimes