Mike Ryan and his Freightliner Drifting! 10,000 lbs and over 3000 ft-lbs of torque. This was one of the highlights of the Optima Ultimate Street Car Invitational. Follow along as Mike get's her sideways at Spring Mountain Ranch. (Click to see any picture full size) If you listen closely, you can hear Chad Reynolds from Bangshift.com quietly whimpering in the passenger seat as they use every bit of the track drifting out of this turn. I had to share this one too: The aftermath of one of the smokiest burnouts ever. Laying on the ground, now in powder form is the handmade Michelin X-1 tires abused regularly by Mike and his Freightliner. Overkill with a side of crazy. I love it. Last thing... Here's a video of Mike Ryan warming up for a Formula Drift event with drift champion Samuel Hubinette. Worth a watch as Mike works the bugs out and gives a Make-a-wish child the ride of his life. [youtube]http://youtu.be/Iw0e6aBfNiI[/youtube] How can you not like and share this? See all of the 2012 Optima Invitational Stories & Pictures...

Drifting at it's best in the mountains of Poland Story courtesy of Drift.ro It was mid-September, 2011, and something big was about to go on in Poland, in the small mountain resort of Karpacz, near the border with the Czech Republic. The usual quietness of the whole area was about to be heavily disturbed as preparations were being made for the 4th Round of the Polish Drift Championship, currently seen as one of the highest rated drifting championship in the whole of Europe. The event had been stirring up quite some interest in Europe in the preceding month, as the course layout was going something never witnessed before in the history of Official Drifting Competitions. It was no racetrack, but it was a street course. More exactly, the event was going to be unfolded on what every drift fan would recognize as being : the Touge. An almost 1km long track, set up at the base of the mountain, going up using two narrow lanes, winding all the way up to the finish line. In two days, more than 25,000 people attended to the event , and it is...

AE86 with 4AG 20V - Japanese Classic Car Don't you hate it when the first thing someone asks you about your car is "How much power does it have?" I really wish that someday, someone would come up and ask me instead, "How much does your car weigh?" Without getting too in-depth about technical power-weight ratio and its applications to various motorsports, it simply means that the lighter the car, the better. Said another way, it basically doesn't matter if you have 1000HP if the car weighs 10,000lbs. It's all about power to weight ratio in this game! Of course, many other factors come into play, depending on the type of racing you're doing too, but to a certain extent- higher horsepower combined with a lightweight chassis is usually the way to go. The AE86 is a code name for a 1985~87 Toyota Corolla GTS, which came in a front engine, rear wheel drive configuration. Because of this layout, the car became immensely popular for racing, typically in road racing, rally, and drifting. These cars are on their way to becoming classics (if they're not already) and sure enough,...

Gymkhana Racing in California Invitational only! This means that only professional race car drivers of various disciplines were invited for a no holds barred gymkhana match at Mr. Block's home field, Toyota Speedway in Irwindale CA. The tire smoke has finally settled after the first ever competition style Gymkhana Grid event on December 4th 2010. The word around the digital informational highway is that the internationally hyped up event had definitely lived up to its expectations and best of all, it looks as though everyone, especially the drivers had waaay too much fun out there! Professional driver, Xgames champion, Top Gear USA host and renaissance man Tanner Foust was killing it out there with his Rockstar Energy Ford Fiesta. Congratulations to Foust, as he managed to score 1st place podium in the AWD class, above Ken Block at his own event! The final battle was a heated one... it was a test of pure skill and gracefulness to pilot their race cars around the track without any mistakes. The drifters seemed to rule the event, as Daijiro Yoshihara in the Discount Tire Nissan 240SX grabbed the RWD 1st place...

1969 Mustang - The Ultimate Street, Drift, Track Car Our friends at Speedhunters.com just released the first photo of the finished 1969 Mustang RTR-X!  It is debuting or just debuted at SEMA 2010 an hour or so ago.  Much info has been shared about the design process that Team Need For Speed at EA Games on Speedhunters.com. Check out Build Progress and pictures. The quick rundown of this ride can be found in the Drifting + Pro-Touring story here.  Thank you Vaughn Gittin Jr (2010 Formula Drift Champion) and Andy Blackmore (Speedhunters.com graphic artist) for dreaming up this...

This is a Mustang for all car enthusiasts, old hot rodders and young tuners alike...its the "Game Changer!" If you like American Muscle, you'll dig the Dynacorn '69 Mustang fastback shell, Art Morrison custom front subframe,  individual throttle body/injected 2011 Mustang GT 5.0L 32Valve engine with 6 speed trans and Pro-Touring style.  If you like Drifting Imports, you'll dig the slammed stance, 50-60 degree steering angle, 7000 redline, aggressive Japanese wheels sized 18x10 front and 18x12 rear with 7" lips and Street Drift style! Meet the '69 Mustang "RTR-X"!  The coolest project car of 2010, due to intro at the 2010 SEMA show in Vegas later this year. This is the answer to my "Pro-Touring + Hellaflush" Dreams!  Remember this post I did last year? The creative mind behind this Street/Drift Mustang is Sir Vaughn Gittin Jr (ok, I added the Sir), Formula Drift points leader and "RTR" Mustang brand owner.  But you'll also notice the "Team Need For Speed" logo in the bottom right.  This is a collabo between Vaughn, Speedhunters.com and the Need For Speed brand.  Andy Blackmore of the Speedhunters.com/Need For Speed family has helped Vaughn put his Inspired Ideas on paper (or...

As I mentioned in the blog about the Rocky Mountain Raceway's Midnight Drift event, I met Marco and his friend Rudy in the pits during the Midnight Drag and Drift event.   First of all, to you hot rodders out there who don't YET get drifting, let me tell you about the Nissan 240SX.  In a way, this car in Japan is similar in following and cult status as a Mustang or Camaro.  The similarities may be more than you think.  Rear wheel drive setup, Coupe body styling, small back seat, huge aftermarket support and fun to drive status.  The differences are aplenty as well though.  Mustangs get a solid rear axle and V6 and V8 engines and weigh 3200-3600lbs.  The Nissan 240SX (or 180SX or Silvia in Japan) comes with an independent rear suspension and 2.4L 4 cylinder (turbo 2.0L outside Japan) naturally aspirated truck engine in the USA and weighs about 2800lbs.  So, there's a little history on the 240 for ya.  Marco has owned his S13 (S13 is like what the Mustang guy's equivalent of SN95 or S197 chassis codes for the 1989-94 240SX, S14 for 1995-1998 and S15 for...

Salt Lake City, Utah has a decent sized auto enthusiasts community for how small of a city and state it is.  There's about 2.5 million people in all of Utah.  Utah has 2 racing facilities, Rocky Mountain Raceway (RMR) with its 1/4 mile dragstrip and asphalt oval and Miller Motorsports Park with its 4+ mile road course. Last night I hit up the 2nd Midnight Drag and Drift event of the year.  RMR has been holding Midnight Drags since about 2001 or so.  It was touted as a way to get the young punks off the streets and have a safe and organized way to race.  I raced my first Civic at a couple Midnight Drags back then.  A couple years ago though, the Drift Enterprise of Utah started holding Midnight Drift events on the oval track.  I thought this sign was kinda cool.  "Section D" for DRIFT!!! The number of cars entered in the drag portion are probably 150-200.  For the drift boys, there's only about 8-10 cars.  The number of people watching the drag racing is probably somewhere around 1000+.  The people watching drifting?  1, maybe  2.  Ok, not that...

Truth be told, I haven't been to an indycar race since I was a kid. At age 9 I was convinced I would be an indycar driver when I grew up. That profession was won over by being a doctor, then being a designer... and on and on the years passed. But when I got an offer for some tickets to the Grand Prix of Long Beach this weekend from Optima Batteries, I couldn't think of anything else I'd rather do on this beautiful Sunday. Ever since I by chance ended up driving these streets while they were blockading them off for the race, I'd wanted to check this event out. It's not some boring circle track - this 1.98 mile track has hairpin and ninety-degree turns and is on the actual streets of Long Beach! This has been a whole 3-day event, but the culmination of it was with today's IZOD Indycar Series race. All 170,000 spectators saw the 25 drivers speed away from the finish line (of these 25 drivers, I'm glad to say 3 were women!) I'd forgotten that there's nothing quite like all those cars...

I don't expect anyone to look at MyRideisMe.com only. I don't! There's too many GREAT websites out there covering all the motorsports, import and tuner shows we're missing here. One of those is Motormavens.com. Antonio and his crew at Motor Mavens cover the Formula Drift series to the max. The picture above shows that Formula D's not limited to 370Z's and RX-8's either. New generation Camaro's and Challengers are on the track putting their rear-wheel-drive butts into competition. What's not to like? Find all of Motor Maven's Formula Drift Coverage HERE. While you're there, check out this great video from Justin Shreeve Films. It's a well produced, clear video showing the speed and precision (or non-precision!) of Formula Drift.  Video HERE. Hope you like...

Yes, I did say Epic.  Trust me, just listen to this video from BMI Racing! We wanted to show you BMI Racing, a Racing Team/Company who moved to the USA from Australia to pursue their racing dreams.  Their plan is to build 2 Mazda RX-8 sport coupes each with a naturally aspirated 4 rotor engine (stock they come with 2 rotor engines and make 240hp), 1 car to compete in drifting and a 2nd car to race in Time Attack events.  They have finished the first one and began testing this past summer. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4Fgi1OQqao[/youtube] Isn't it nuts that a crowd will cheer like that over an engine?  It's the first RX-8 Renesis 4 rotor engine in the world right now.   It sounds like an F1 engine, it just SCREAMS!!!  What's a 4 rotor Wankel?  Well, simply put, each RX8 engine has 2 rotors mounted in series.  This 4 rotor is sort of a "big block" rotary with 4 rotors mounted in series, or 2 RX8 engines mounted in series.  Cool right!?  We don't have many details about the 4 rotor engine setup just yet.  We hope to fill you in with the juicy rotary...

Part 2 of Hot Rod Ramblings "Car of the Week", we take a look at some rear wheel drive beauties from all around the world, Japanese, European and even American.  These 5 cars have all been "Cars of the Week" in the last few years for me.  They all have great aftermarket support, wheels, suspension, exterior, engine, etc. and can all be built into multiple different styles, drifting, road racing, street car or show car.  Each has tons of potential to let their owners be creative and make their Ride an extension of themselves. Toyota AE86 Corolla GT-S "Hachiroku" A 1980's Corolla?  You're probably thinking I'm nutty.  I am, I love this car.  Why?  It is probably the ultimate drivers car.  Ever heard of Keichii Tsuchiya, the "Drift King"?  Heard of the Japanese comic book "Initial D"?  Anyway, that should give you guys something to Google today.  I can't spoil all the fun.  But, suffice it to say, it has all the makings of a drivers car:  rear wheel drive, 5 speed manual, high revving 1.6L DOHC fuel injected aluminum 4 cylinder and lightweight construction.  I love the boxy lines of...