I’ve always been fascinated with the love our antipodean friends seem to have for the rotary engine. It’s not so much a passing interest, oh no, they’ve developed quite the affliction with the buzzing Wankel. Our first trip to Australia in 2010 is where we got our initial exposure of all things rotary, when we [...]
What is it that makes a properly done drift car so cool? Take a look at the pink metalflake-covered Toyota Mark II pictured above and it becomes easy to figure out. Of course, this isn’t just any Mark II – this is the iconic Team Magician JZX110, one of the most recognizable drift cars in [...]
So there we were: it was the first Monday of May, which in the UK means a public holiday. Hurrah! A month ago there was snow on the ground and many cars were tucked away in garages, safe from the ravages of an unusually long and severe winter that had rudely intruded into spring. But [...]
I’ll be honest: when I was a kid, I had absolutely no clue where life would take me. I did have dreams, however, and as I’ve mentioned before I can still remember the first time I watched Days of Thunder back in the ’90s. Fifteen years later, I am driving for multiple and very iconic teams [...]
Ever since running across Nagano-san and his creations at past Nagoya Exciting Car Showdowns, I’ve been wanting to drop by his workshop in the outskirts of Kyoto for quite some time. It’s hard to put a finger on it all but Paint & Cutting Make Nagano Koubou has been extremely influential in creating the very [...]
Can you believe it’s already April again? While I associate April first with my Speedhunters anniversary, for drift fans it means something much more exciting – the official start to the Formula D season. Long Beach is round one on the calendar and brings with it many highly anticipated build debuts. Today we’ll take a [...]
Change and variety are the single most important things that keep drift series going. D1, after enduring some tough times a few seasons back and what can only be described as a bit of stale period, seems to have regained its momentum again. And while the organizers continue to mix things up by selecting exciting [...]
When faced with the need to stand out, a true challenge in any forms of motorsports, it’s pretty safe to say that RS-R have taken the correct path. With a need to replace their successful, yet ageing JZA80 Supra, for this year’s Formula D Asia championship, they ended up doing things a little differently. It [...]
Do you guys remember the motorFIX shop we visited last year as well as the 1UZ-powered Corolla we featured? Well how about revising that awesome workshop nestled deep in the Gifu hills thanks to this new video from Luke Huxham. It’s not like you need an excuse to take another look at the awesome V8 KE70! Hit that play button, come on…
-Dino Dalle Carbonare
More...
For me, visiting Japan is an exercise in constant amazement. Wherever I go in the country, I’m greeted by incredibly passionate people doing incredible things with incredible cars. During the 35 days that I spent there on this most recent expedition, I was able to see an unprecedented array of Japanese car culture. Picking a [...]
Now that I’ve shared some of my initial thoughts and observations from this year’s Osaka Auto Messe, I thought I’d go ahead and jump right in with a Spotlight-O-Rama with some of my favorite cars from the show. I’ll begin with the tough looking Toyota 86 you see above. Built by Todoroki Auto, this hachi-roku [...]
As I touched on during yesterday’s post , being at an MSC event is an many ways like stepping into a time machine and traveling back to the era when drifting was defined by what happened on the streets and small circuits of Japan. A lot has changed since then, even here in Japan, but [...]
Tsukuba Circuit. The modest race track located in the countryside of Ibaraki Perfecture outside of Tokyo is a place of legend. All across the world Tsukuba is known as the proving ground for Japan’s tuners and as the birthplace of Time Attack. Besides all of the history that’s been made at the track, Tsukuba has [...]
Satomi Nakawatase’s S14 is unlike any Silvia you have ever seen before. The car has evolved over the last couple of years from an interesting military themed project into something that words can literally not describe. The last time I saw it, Satomi had replaced the side glass with metal sheets and made a removable tank-like cover for the windscreen. What really makes this ichi-yon special however is that it’s driven and drifted on a regular basis, not just a bizarre creation to wow people at shows. To find out more hit play and watch this film put together by Luke Huxham…
-Dino Dalle Carbonare
More...
Choosing Speedhunters feature cars is not an easy thing to do. At a glance it might sound pretty straightforward, but there are always certain things we consider when looking at potential feature machines. In our travels we see lots of cars we like. and cars that all of us would be happy to have sitting our own garages – but a feature car should go beyond that. It’s not necessarily a physical quality we look for, but a certain extra appeal that makes a car stand out.
