Japspeed Subaru Drift car stolen (with a happy ending)

Our friends from Wrecked Magazine posted this up. I saw this all over Facebook. It was the Toyota 1JZ-GTE powered Drift Subaru was stolen from a Car Show in the UK this past weekend. After a crazy Social Networking blitz, they were able to find it with only a few stickers missing and minus the rear wing. So, how do these thieves think they were going to sell these parts? On NASIOC? “F/S: 1JZ Swap for a Subaru Kit”. Idiots. I’m glad that they found this Subie and I hope that we don’t have to hear any more stories like this!

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Here’s something cool… a drifting Saabaru from Wrecked Magazine!

Our friends at Wrecked Magazine took these pictures at a Club Loose drift event! What they captured is a drifting Saabaru. I don’t have much info on this wagon but it looks great going sideways!

So you can learn drifting in this STi, if you understood what he was saying

So I was snooping around the Facebook universe when I ran into this video:
CLICK HERE TO WATCH

The driver’s name is Abdo Feghali and looks like he’s got a pretty well set up Rear Wheel Drive STi. A few things I noticed was it was pretty basic. Meaning, it had no competition roll cage, no racing / safety interior bits, or anything crazy. Also did a quick search on him and looks like he’s a Redbull Driver for Rally and looks like he’s their spokes person for Redbull in their drifting competition going on in Abu Dhabi. Looks like a simple demo vehicle. There are series of these videos on their website. Check it out when you have a chance.

Freeze Frame: Sliding Subaru in NZ

Seems like Subarus are getting more popular in Drift these days especially in NZ. Purposely build drift Subaru and it looks great.

Source: Speedhunters

Team Orange WRX saved after Japan Earthquake

After a few days of carnage, destruction, and utter sadness that the world witnessed the recovery and rebuilding has begun in Japan. Many of us have ties with Japan (including myself) however, the motorsports community also looks at Japan as one of the fathers of motorsports including Drifting. Our friends at Wrecked Magazine have kept us in the loop in regards to what the drifting community have been going through these past few days of recovery.

In Ebisu, one of the main circuits of drifting in Japan and also home of Team Orange, the world famous WRX driven by Kumakubo, was stuck in one of the garages that has collapsed and has slid down a hill.

Using a crane to pull it out, efforts were made to make sure that the WRX was not damaged.

Luckily no one was hurt in Ebisu and that they’re doing what they can to rebuild over there. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in Japan.

Wrecked interviews Jason Cancio. Father of a drift GRB! This is so full of win.

Our friends at Wrecked featured one of the most unique drift machines. We don’t often see a GRB in a RWD fashion. They did an interview with the driver and owner of this amazing machine and here’s what Jason Cancio did to get it become a slide machine:

I spent almost $4K just to get this car sideways. <—- That was difficult. Haha. First of all, I told Ray at Garage Autohero what I wanted to do to my car. He told me I would need a center differential sleeve, and clutch type rear diff center. So, I did my research. That was a pretty difficult part because Watanabe Service were the ones who made the sleeve, and they didn’t make a sleeve for the 08 STI, the latest model they made it for was the 07 STI. So I took my chances and bought it anyway because I just wanted this car to be done. And thank god it worked! Front axles were taken apart so the stubs were left in the transmission to keep from leaking oil. And stubs were left in the knuckles too.

Secondly, another difficulty that was ran into was installed the rear diff center. I bought a Cusco 2 way LSD for the rear, there were no bearing in it yet, so we had to get some.

ALTHOUGH, the bearings were discontinued. I was definitely almost heartbroken when I heard this. But Ray worked his magic and came through for me! He had to find new bearings through the measurements of the old bearings. I was glad to hear this because he found that the old bearings were torn to pieces already, the new ones he found were much stronger. So, no wonder the old bearings were discontinued….. sad for 08 GR owners. 
Suspension was also a must, stock was much too soft and much too high for my tastes.

This interview goes into details about how the car handles and the future of the Subaru. Check out the article HERE!

Oh you crazy Euros! Drift Subaru with a Toyota Motor… Not sure how we feel about this one

Drifting… usually brings out the most ingenious combos of engines and cars together. We’ve seen Nissan Silvia motors in Corollas and GM motors in Nissan Silvias but this has to take the cake in the most interesting combos. Our good friends at Speedhunters just did a feature on the Japspeed Drift Subaru.

Now, this Subaru has been doing quite well in the British Drift Championship.

In true drift fashion, this Subaru drips of style and performance.

According to Speedhunters, this Subaru wasn’t always a Hawk Eye instead it started its life as a Bug Eye. However with the lift of the “bonnet” (yeah, I called it that since this is a Euro Car) there is a sight that we are not used to seeing. A straight 6 motor.

Now from my understanding it used to run a fully built EJ25 motor but now was converted to use a Toyota 1JZ 2.5 Straight Six motor. To some Subaru purists, this is no longer a Subaru…

Regardless of what heart it runs in it, it’s still a great looking car and I’m sure it’s going to slide its way onto the podium shortly.

Source: Speedhunters

Rumormill: Could a Toyobaru already being built for Drifting?

Ahh I might as well call today Toyobaru day since I have another FT86 article coming up the pipeline shortly. Our good friends at Wrecked Magazine got tipped off that Papadakis Racing (Tanner Fousts’ car builder) has already received a FT86!

Word from some reliable sources has it that Papadakis Racing (team owner of Tanner Foust’s Scion tC) has a new Scion FT-86  in it’s possession. We have also been told it might already be caged! We revealed 10 days ago a caged Scion tC that we are certain will be his 2011 Formula Drift car. Judging by the rumored release dates of this Scion FT-86 it appears that Tanner and Steph could be building a 2012 car already to start testing and make this thing a contender in 2012.

Could a production ready version already be out for teams to use? Could it be that they’re ready to release these cars? Could Subaru of America send us one to build? (wink wink).

Drift Union’s Drift Legacy nominated as Car of the Year!

Our friends at Speedhunters have put up their nominees for Car of the Year and our favorite drift Legacy has made the cut!

Support this Subie by going to Speedhunters and cast your vote today!

10 Questions with Stephan Verdier and his Formula Drift Season and Rally!

Well, the Formula Drift season has now finished and our favorite Subie Driver in the Formula Drift field has called it a season. We contacted our friend, Stephan Verdier driver of the Crawford Performance STi. We got a chance to talk to him about his season in Formula Drift, Rally Cross, XGames Rally, and the future.

 

Q: Stephan, thanks for joining back with us at Subie-Life.com! The Formula Drift season just ended for you and it’s been quite a busy one for you. What were the highlights of the season for you?

A: Thank you for having me back. To answer your question, unfortunately I don’t have any highlights in drifting this season. I had my worst season in 5 years. I made a lot of driving errors and mechanical failures. I’m kind of glad that the season is over so I can regroup and get ready for next season.

Q: Your car debuted at Long Beach Round 1 as an Iron Man 2 car, then made a few changes to a multi-color rally car, then back to a drift car. What was that experience like, having to change your Subaru so many times this season?

A: Yes, I was fortunate to get a sponsorship with Royal Purple for the movie Iron Man 2. It only was a deal for the first 2 races (in Formula Drift). Then I got invited to compete at the X-games in the Rallycross event. Since my deal with Iron Man2 was finished I decided to redo the scheme on my car, and keep it for the rest of the FD season. It was really fun to transform the car back and forth between drifting and rally. It’s much easier than people think, I only changed the suspension, transmission, turbo and brakes. The rest of the car was the same as drifting. Here’s a breakdown on what I did:

• The suspension we went from Stance to Tein because Tein has been in rally for a long time and has a fantastic rally gravel suspension, then went back to the Stance for drifting
• Gear box, Crawford performance landed me a  AWD Kaps sequential gearbox for the x-games. Sequential is a must in rally cross. I normally use a stock Sti box in drifting
• Turbo, Garrett gave me a twin scroll that with the help of Crawford we install to replace the Garrett GT30 that use in drifting.
• Brake, because we use 15 inch tire for gravel, I need smaller brake than the stock STI to fit the wheel, I used with the help of Subaru of Ontario stock wrx brakes.
• To finish Crawford did a remap of the stock Ecu for the new turbo and GTI made some bumper and skid plates.

Q: I think everyone (including myself) was cheering for you to win at XGames in the Super Rally. What was that experience like for you to compete against factory supported vehicles? How did it feel to be door to door in a Rally Cross setting?

A: X-Games was my highlight of the season. It was unbelievable!!!. It was a surprise that we were that competitive. I knew driving wise I was as fast as the factory driver. Where I was the most worried, was about my car. Like I said that car was made for drifting and I had no experience in Rallycross. All the Euro-rally cross cars  made around 650hp on a 2L engine with a 45mm restrictor. I was using a 2.5L engine with a 45mm restrictor and was hopping to be around 500hp. I was confident with Crawford being involve since they’ve been making massive power on there 2.7L with the Time attack car however they never played with a restrictor, so I was a bit nervous. Crawford was able to make over 500 hp and be reliable.I was still under power over the other rallycross cars but because of the 10 inches tire rule, I knew that the Ford or Factory Suby wouldn’t be able to use their full power on gravel.

Everybody had anti-lag and launch control but I didn’t since I was still on my stock ecu. I knew the event was going to be tough.

It was a huge surprise when we qualified 2nd overall. The only guy that beat me was Travis (Pastrana) which has a purposely build Subaru XGames car.

Racing door to door in a stadium with cars screaming was amazing, I’m hooked on rallycross.

Q: What was the highlight for XGames for you?

A: The whole XGames was the highlight! Qualifying 2nd, winning my heat against (Ken) Block and (Dave) Mirra, bouncing off (Brian) Deagan on my first lap, and Catching Tanner (Foust) in our heat! Everything.

Q: As one of the few privateers in Formula Drift, how hard (or easy) is it for you to have to try and conserve funds for each event?

A: It’s really hard to compete in FD (Formula Drift) as a privateer, if you want to be competitive. Fortunately with the sponsorship of Subaru and Royal Purple I was able to do it, but it still cost me a lot of money. That’s the problem with FD now, it’s too expensive to have a competitive car and impossible to do it as a privateer. You might be able to get 1 decent result in the season but won’t be able to be competitive at every event. Cars now are really light and really powerful. The top cars are around 2500 pounds with 650 hp. Only a couple years back you just needed 400hp with a 2700 pounds car to win.

Q: In Vegas you experienced a pretty intense crash but we saw your car again recently at Sonoma and then Irwindale and it looks fine! How were you able to pull that off?

A: Las Vegas was an expensive weekend. I made a big mistake and destroyed the rear end of my car. I was able to buy a rear clip for $500 and take it to my body shops M.O.B.S in Anaheim, CA. They cut my car in half and welded the rear clip on. The car was fixed a week after the crash. 

Q: What new things did you learn from this Season of Formula Drift?

A: That I need a v8 and a light car. The level of driving is way higher than in 2009, same for the cars. I can’t do it as a privateer again. I will need to be part of a team to make it.

Q: Everyone wants to know, will you keep your current STi or go with the new Sedan?

A: In drifting I really doubt that I’ll be in a Subaru for next season. It’s not really the right type of racing for Subaru, as their “thing” is AWD. So, I don’t think I’ll be able to get any support from them (for next season). Also the Subaru platform is not ideal for drifting. You need a real RWD car to be competitive or spend a fortune to make the Suby work. I was able to get away with mine because the other cars were not as developed as they are now. But if Subaru want me to, I would love to do a new STI. I tried last year but couldn’t get the funding for it.

Q: Formula Drift for 2011? What about the new Rally Car series which is rumored to come around the West Coast next year?

A: 2011 Formula Drift, as right now, I don’t have any plan for it. I really want to be in it for 2011 but need to find a team. I can’t afford to do it as a privateer again. Rallycross, I want to be part of it too. My first plan is to drive for a team, I’m talking to 3 teams right now, hopefully I can make it happen. At worst I can use my car for selected West Coast Events. I think by SEMA will know the exact schedule and tv package. 

Q: Who would like to thank that helped you out?

A: There is lot of people that helped me this season: Subaru, Cooper Tires, Crawford Performance, Royal Purple, GTI, Stance, Tein, Garrett, RMR, Enkei, Ignite Fuel, Seibon, APR, I-Speed, and Subaru of Ontario.

Thank you Stephan for your time. Hopefully we can do a feature on your Subie!