Drifting started off in Japan nearly 25 years ago and the cars that were commonly used to drift were the Mazda RX-7, Toyota AE86 Corolla, and Nissan Silvias and 180SX's. Pretty much anything rear-wheel-drive would do. The engines that powered these cars were small displacement 4-cylinder engines or in the case of RX-7, a 1.3 liter rotary engine. Over time some of these engines became turbocharged which gave them a bit more horsepower and of course the aftermarket developed many many parts for these cars, platforms, and engines.
In Japan today, the drift scene is still primarily powered by turbocharged small displacement and medium displacement engines. The Toyota six cylinder 1JZ-GTE and 2JZ-GTE engine is especially popular nowadays as well due to more people switching over to big 4 door saloons such as the Toyota Chaser or Nissan Laurel to drift in.
Toyota JZX100 Chaser
Drifting came to America in 2003 with the first D1 Grand Prix USA (D1GP) event held at Irwindale Speedway in Irwindale, California. D1GP is Japan's premier drifting series and when they threw their first event stateside, it kickstarted drifting for the rest of America. The US started very similarly to Japan with the Mazdas and the Nissans being the weapons of choice to drift in. However, the US-spec cars got the shaft in terms of their engines which were far less superior than the engines of their Japanese counterparts. Everyone started importing over the venerable Nissan turbocharged SR20DET motor from Japan to swap out their lowly US-spec KA24DE truck engines. So for a few years, most American drifters were using turbochargers to amp up their engines and to stay competitive. However, America being America, the V8's started to invade.
People started throwing Chevy LS V8 engines into their small Japanese drift cars. It wasn't all that uncommon anymore to pop the hood open on a Mazda RX-7 and see a LS6 motor out of a Z06 Corvette staring back at you.
1993 Mazda RX-7 with Corvette LS6 engine shoehorned in
So why the decision to go V8 other than 'MURICAAA? Well it kinda makes sense in a way. There are so many V8-powered cars in America. You can take a V8 out of a Camaro, Corvette, Mustang, even some SUV's. The abundance of these cars means that they are cheap! In addition, V8's are reliable and provide gobs of power and torque in almost any RPM range which makes them great for drifting. In drifting, reliability is key and having enough horsepower and torque to keep the rear wheels spinning is always a plus. A V8 provides both attributes at a reasonable cost.
These days, finding a good and unabused Japanese motor is hard. Good SR20DET motors are getting more and more expensive and becoming increasingly harder to find. In addition, making an SR20DET motor produce over 350 horsepowers reliably also adds up to be quite expensive. A standard SR20DET motor will probably fetch around $3000 these days and will require an additional $3000 in parts to make the motor perform in the 350-400 horsepower range. So $6000 versus buying a Chevy LS V8 for $2000 and maybe an additional $1000 in fabrication, parts and electronics to make the engine fit.
Clean example of a well sorted out turbocharged SR20DET motor in a Nissan 180SX
Out of the box, a LS1 V8 engine will put out around 345 horsepowers and around 350 foot pounds of torque. You add in a big cam with supporting engine mods which can be easily had with the plethora of aftermarket support for V8 engines here in America, and you can push that motor to well past 500 horsepowers reliably for not too much money.
So a V8 engine is cheaper, easier to make power on, more reliable, and doesn't really weigh that much more than a small displacement turbocharged engine. So it all makes sense right? Its a win win?
I believe that V8 engines do make sense. However, they kind of disgust me. I do understand the need to be competitive. More than half of the field of drivers that compete in Formula Drift (the premier professional drifting body in the US) use V8's. However, I feel that its changing the soul and character of drifting. Drifting is supposed to be about a car always just charging, with the engine ragged out being at like 110%, bouncing off the rev-limiter and just going apeshit. However, with a V8 engine, that is lost. You can peter around at 3000 RPM's and still spin the tires with a V8. It's boring. I also think that it makes things too easy. Having that torque and power always readily available is a great thing, however it also limits driving potential.
A driver that has learned how to drift with a low-powered car has had to learn many different techniques in order to keep a car sideways and in drift since they could not rely on the engine alone to do all the work. On the flip side, a driver who has learned how to drift with a V8 has always had the luxury of having power and torque to rely on to keep a car sideways. They don't need to clutch-kick mid-corner to keep the RPM's up or the turbo spooled. They don't need to learn how to utilize the e-brake to extend a drift out while clutching in and feathering the gas to keep the revs up so when they drop the e-brake again, they are still within the engine's powerband. With a V8, you just push the gas and go.
A V8 simply isn't exciting to me. Drifting is supposed to be intense. It's not supposed to be a walk in the park. Hearing the low growl of a V8 motor is not as intense as hearing a high-strung 2JZ-GTE bouncing off the rev-limiter with an externally gated Garret GTX4249R Turbo at full boost.
Here's the sound that Daigo Saito's Toyota JZX100 Chaser makes for reference:
Here's the sound that Matt Power's V8 LS7-powered Nissan 240SX makes:
I mean its all personal preference I guess. You can say I'm a purist in some regards. I guess I'm just a nostalgic. I like keeping things Japanese-style. Like I said before, going V8 makes complete sense to stay competitive. It's not the ONLY way to be competitive though as many people seem to make it out to be. Even when showing up to amateur / grassroots level drift competitions nowadays, and listening to the sounds of all the cars being fired up in the pits and noticing the guttural sound of V8's droning out over half of the field.. it's kind of depressing.
Images courtesy of:
http://www.speedhunters.com
http://www.noriyaro.com
yeah i agree when there is a level of difficulty and skill you gain a greater appreciation for the sport, the easy stuff is boring....
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