“Drift Bible” Review

[igor@af]

by Vladyslav Sushko

For anyone who has more appreciation for a car than to keep it in day-to-day slavery of car-pulls to work, for anyone capable of taking a risk and letting loose to see what two pairs of wheels can really do, and even for some of you proficient drifters out there, “Drift Bible” is a video “must see.” The proud “Drift King” Keiichi Tsuchiya reveals his art with the same sort of easiness as Bob Ross once did to convert the wannabe’s into painters.

Winner of Le Mans – 24, Tsuchiya starts out by pushing the G-force barrier in his tail-fish loving Nissan Silvia to demonstrate the six basic techniques of drifting. The techniques build upon each other and progress by including additional elements of control such as heel-and-toe move to accommodate additional variables like a large weight transition. The first and the easiest way to drift Tsuchiya calls the “Slide” while the sixth and most difficult technique naturally bears the name of the “Lift-Off.” By the way, do not let the Iron-Chef sounding voice of the English translator discourage you, even if your mom could not learn a thing from that show about cooking, the “Drift Bible” will teach you way more than your mother wants you to know about drifting. As Tsuchiya’s Silvia blasts though each corner, the viewer is able to observe speed, RPM level, and the driver’s nasty pedal work through well placed special mini-screens. Tsuchiya does even more for those of us drifter-wannabe’s that have not yet learned to multitask. A sensei in the most fatherly sense of the word, the “Drift King” reviews the pedal work in a stationary car and even stands in the middle of the road with a detached steering wheel just to show his pupils how to execute a turn.

Once you have gulped up the six drifting techniques, you might be asking yourself how to apply them to cars other than Silvia. Well, the omniscient “Drift King” has the answer. He takes the viewers to a race track in the misty highlands on the Japan Sea Coast where he demonstrates how to drift in three cars with drastically different weight characteristics: Toyota AE86, Silvia S14, and Toyota MR2. Multiple replays, review sessions, and the use of gravity balls provide plenty of aid in understanding the intricacies of car specific drifts. Next he takes AE86, the car of his youth, to a wide-open area where he shows some drifts and spins he started out with right after getting his license. Tsuchiya also makes recommendations on some specific mods and tire choices. Afterwards he takes his car to play at the Ebisu Circuit Driftland, a kind of place I wish Walt Disney had built for adults in America to enjoy. This part of the video is by far the easiest to understand and should be a starting point for every novice before he or she goes on slopping round corners. Disclaimer or no disclaimer, after watching Tsuchiya bust those 360’s I could not wait to get into my car and do the same. Besides, I felt that he really wanted me to. Before you grab your car keys and run out the door – hold – the Drift King concludes his “Bible” with a spectacular “high speed-drifting” finale. Now GO!!

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