1976 Ford Escort – Antique Roadshow – 188

Huddled on the bank of a dusty road in between some trees, on a cold, still winter’s morning, the silence is broken by that unmistakable sound of twin sidedrafts screaming for air as a Ford Escort flies around the corner, leaving a rooster tail of dust. It’s fond memories like this, that Tony Stewart holds of the legendary RS2000 rally cars, that led him on a year-long hunt for the perfect Escort. As he explains: “I was originally looking for a standard Escort, with the intention of building a tough little street car, until this particular RS2000 replica turned up. It was easy to see it had been looked after from day one, and already had the gearbox and suspension sorted, so that [was going to] save me a lot of time and money down the track. When I checked it out the

1989 Nissan Cefiro – Lemon Fresh – 188

 

The A31 Nissan Cefiro occupies a special place in the heart of New Zealand drifting. Right from the beginning, at the start of last decade, it has been a car that has dominated the scene at all levels of the sport. In fact, it was four years into the D1NZ championship before the mighty A31 Cefiro was toppled from the number one championship spot. Jairus Wharerau, Justin Rood and Adam Richards all claimed DK titles in Cefiros before Daniel Woolhouse eventually toppled the taxis behind the wheel of a Silvia. With that kind of history, it’s no real wonder that the A31 is still one of the most popular drift platforms across the country. But with that celebrity comes the inevitable horde of wannabe-drift Cefiros — you know the cars we mean — the automatic, naturally aspirated shitters rolling your main street banged down on choppies. This has given the Cef a somewhat tarnished rep as a hoodrat-mobile, and sometimes we tend to forget that they are still very capable drift cars, if, of course, they’ve been done right. D1LEMN, a 1989 example owned by Simon Paul, is exactly that.

THE ANGRY BIRD: UNDER THE SURFACE OF THE 86-X

My first memory of anything Hachiroku, and also anything drifting, started with a gentleman named Katsuhiro Ueo. I am sure many of you remember those short, gritty, AMAZING drifting video clips to first come out of Japan. I know this is technically an AE85, and not a REAL 86, but this was what started it [...]