I became aware of drifting’s rising star in motorsports in a rather unorthodox way: I had import fanboys shoving copies of Modified magazine in my face whenever they got them in the mail while we were in Iraq. Drifting had been on my radar due to reports I had seen on the Japanese scene from panicky American tabloid shows (“oh my god it’s the next new thing that will replace drugs! Somebody please think of the children!”) but as far as being interested? At the time, no thank you. If I wanted to see drifting, I’d go find a damp section of roadway and go do it myself. All of the cars looked like leftover background vehicles from the first two Fast and Furious films. One guy in particular loved to give me crap by the truckload for my anti-import stance, usually with the battle-cry of “power to weight ratio, brah!”
One day, as he was pawing through yet another box from home, he finds his treasured magazine, and bypassing all of the other goodies inside, plonks down and starts reading. He then stops flipping through the pages, spits out a ton of epithets (some racial in nature) and throws the magazine and walks out. Naturally, I had to look, and lo and behold, there’s a Nissan getting chased down a course by a flat-black El Camino. I couldn’t stop laughing…and Bubba Drift, with wheelman Mike Peters, had a new fan, if for no other reason than an El Camino hanging out the tail with a bunch of import tuners essentially was a gigantic middle finger to everybody. They bowed out after the 2005 season, though rumors persisted of a third-gen Camaro drift car (which appeared) and a return to Formula D (…if anyone knows, because I wasn’t able to find anything.) But it was the El Camino that became almost viral. This video, compiled in 2008 by Peters himself, shows that the Elky was nothing short of a riot. It earned him Rookie of the Year in 2005, and brought drifting onto the pages of Hot Rod (December 2004).
It’s been ten years…how about the El Camino’s return?
I don’t understand why folks think some music sounds better than the actual engine sounds. Even though cool music. Maybe Formula “E” would be a good place.