Posts Tagged ‘drift’

Radio Controlled Drifting

Friday, February 11th, 2011

We’re not averse to the joys of drifting. We can dig the appeal. As the FIA outcast rebel motor­sport, full of counter­in­tu­itive weighted rear ends, welded diffs and an aesthetic of smoke and sideways-​​ness that rubs the old guard funda­mentally up the wrong way, we’re all for it.

But watching this amazing little video confirms that sliding sideways in Radio Controlled cars make even more sense.

Delving deep into this RC subcult you can see that it requires a special kind of dedic­ation — and one that you can’t help admire.

Apparently, it’s all in the creation of the right kind of slippery rubber wear, which when combined with AWD models, make it easy to kick the back out while holding a line.

These guys have also combined the aesthetic of your classic hip hop vid with incredibly detailed modded RC models.

Power to their dextrous fingers. Highlight of the vid comes with the parking skills demon­trated around 2’30″. YouTube Preview Image

Toyota Corolla AE86 Backsliders

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Stumbled across this inter­esting little video recently. It seems that the bog standard, straight out of the factory version of the AE86 was always well-​​disposed to kicking out the tail.

Subsequent gener­a­tions of the obsessed have of course created a drift legend by welding up the diffs and weighing out the back of these mid-​​eighties period beauties.

In this video a Toyota team take a couple of the cars around the classic circuits of Europe with top drivers at the helm, you can see that they didn’t need any drivetrain jiggery pokery to slide nice and twistedly-​​like.

Reminds us that you don’t need a full after­market, race-​​specced track day monster to have fun on a racing circuit.

via JNC

YouTube Preview Image

Gymkhana 2: Ken Block Buster

Thursday, July 2nd, 2009

There’s been a lot of nonsense written and spoken about the world of extreme sports. Laden with the image of the bugged out adultes­cents redolent of the marketing campaigns for energy drinks, baggy b-​​boy denim and the idiotic language of dudish, the mainstream world unsur­pris­ingly sneers at much of surf and skate­board culture. But in Ken Block, the petrolhead community has the most credible of crossovers.

Block, one of the founders of giant skate shoe company DC shoes, and has competed as a skate­boarders, a snowboarder as well as a motocross rider. But after DC was bought out by even bigger surf brand Quiksilver in 2004, Ken decided to go racing full time.

Right from the start, it was apparent that block was the real deal. Not only is he a brilliant precision driver, his hard-​​won skinny on the yoof marketing racket has created a ground­breaking set of youtube block-​​busters (no pun intended), that has set the revhead world alight.

Props go out to the technical quality of this, the second instalment of the Gymkhana series, as well as our Ken’s preter­natural dexterity behind the wheel. Super technical skate videos are difficult enough to put together, with endless takes required to make the subjects look like superheroes.

Who knows how long it took to put this balletic beauty on the WWW?