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Browsing Posts in Back In The Day (Cars)

Watch Hiroshi from Running Free in his AE86… still drifting after all these years and still being a bad ass.

Check out his super aggressive entry into the main corner from the straight away!

In-car footage of the same laps above.

I’ve been watching some surfing stuff lately, and they talk about going back to where surfing originated with longboards, which you ride completely different than the modern shortboards you see in today’s surfing competitions. Hiroshi’s videos totally reminds me of longboarding, because he’s been doing this for much longer than I’ve even heard of drifting, and if you watch his initiations, he is still doing it in his old purist style… he is not kicking the clutch or pulling the e-brake (zzzzzzz). He uses the momentum and speed of the car to drift and you just don’t see that anymore! Hiroshi is all purist, isn’t he? His AE86 has the same style as it did in the 90s (aftermarket front bumper only, no sides, no rear), he still has a 4AG engine with carburetors (no engine swaps or turbos), his driving technique is the same and he still drifts for fun. Much like the term soul surfer, would he be considered a soul drifter?

BMW 1M

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This is a pretty cool video of the BMW 1M burning some rubber.  I wonder how much of it is real and what those walls are made of?

I think the video was filmed at the Mojave Airport.  I did some drifting for a video shoot quite a few years back. Here’s a small snippet of that video shoot with me and Ken-chan doing some donuts at sunset.

Another interesting fact about this airport (actually called Mojave Air and Space Port) is that it houses Space-X’s SpaceShipOne and also contains an airplane boneyard where lots of movies are filmed.

Marc showed me this old video made by Andy Sapp. It’s his event coverage of the RS-R Drift Festival held at Joliet, IL. Orido was there and Alex Pfeiffer was lucky enough to do demo with him all day!

I finished in 2nd place, but to this day I’m still not really sure how that happened or if I really deserved it. It was the first time really driving Yellow Thing, the 3rd gear synchro died and would never get into gear straight out of 2nd, and 3rd gear seemed to pop out into neutral whenever it felt like it. I beat out Hiro and Taka who were driving crazy hard like they were possessed, whereas I would just put around the track. I lucked out because people kept making mistakes around me. I was driving super consistent (as much as the problematic car would allow) but just not all that great.

Here’s a picture of Yellow Thing in all it’s glory on the cover of Turbo Magazine:

This was also a significant day for me, because not only did I get to meet a lot of cool Chicago who I’m still friends with today, but also because I used the winnings as my first step towards saving for an engagement ring for Nadine. It was also the event I was very torn about attending, because Nadine’s grandfather was gravely ill when I left Los Angeles. I took the very first flight home the next morning, but he passed away while I was in the air.

RS*R Drift Festival. (2004) from Andy Sapp on Vimeo.

On one of Slide Squad Dave’s trips to Japan, he stayed with Hiroshi Takahashi of Running Free fame.  Dave was living my dream visiting shops, the race tracks we would see in the magazines and videos, riding in famous drift cars, driving at touge…  and every once in a while he would send e-mail updates along with videos and photos he was taking.

This was one of my favorites probably.

And yeah – he is eating with both hands while driving.

I just randomly found this picture of me on a french website.  I guess it’s somehow related to Mulsanne… I remember befriending an older French guy with Mulsanne on his business card.  I think that same business is somehow involved with a local drift team in Southern California.

Anyway, the picture is of me driving the KAAZ car at Irwindale in front of the D1 judges.   Funny – I can’t even remember what event this is!  The combination of me not remembering plus the picture shows barely any smoke tells me that I probably didn’t do very well.  But it’s still nice to see new pictures from the past!

More Old Pictures

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I looked at my blog today and realized I don’t have any pictures of my car on here. I really should redesign the look and feel of this site. Until then, here are some old car pics.


From one of my early day touge drifting sessions. I was so into getting my front tire into that rain gutter. My favorite part of this picture was the flowers in front of my bumper.  Read one of my old posts about drifting at touge.


This is from Drift Day 9… LAS VEGAS! I drove my car there in the hellish heat with no a/c. We all remember that drive as one of the worst drives we ever made in our cars.  Read my blog post about the vegas drift event.

Drift Day 11 at Irwindale. This was my favorite look for my car... standard front silvia bumper with oem side skirts, oem rear unders and wangan spoiler. I liked my stickers like that as well.

Drift Day 11 - Irwindale rear shot

Another shot from Drift Day 11. My lovely concave face TE37s in the front :)

streets of willow speedometer shot

Shot my speedo at Streets of Willow. Drifting at 55mph was a big deal for me back then! Fuel gauge not working. Ghetto!