And it is a fantastic drift car, this acccording to young celebrity drifter Vic “King Of Drift Swagger” Pardal. Above the mainstream marketing donkey Toyota has been riding in its bid to garner desire for the car, which it has succesfully achieved jugding by the scores of gob-smacked faces that followed the 86 where we went, the real test is its hyped up driftability, and what better way to introduce it to some icons of that exciting motorsport in a bid to find if indeed the four-cylinder 86 can match the famous six and eight cylinder masters of Drifting?
There really is no need to be inventive beyond reason. Look at the local SupaDrift Series and you’ll find old Nissans and a smattering of American brawn. So if you are a Drifter at heart, you really only have two showroom alternatives aptly suited to smoky sideway action and that is face of Japanese Drift culture the Nissan’s 370Z and the Chevy Lumina.
At R538 525 the Nissan 370Z is the most expensive of the trio but also the most explicit. Like all ZED cars it hasn’t aged a bit and the mechanics aren’t half bad either; a turbo-less V6 version of Nissan’s GTR making 245kW and 363Nm. The six-speed manual sends power rearwards towards the heavily sculpted arches and 275/35R19 rubber. There are no faux rear seats and the boot, while shallow, is enough to load a fair amount of camera gear into. The forward picture is one geared towards drift combat. Low seating position, small leather wheel, centre-mounted gauges… Room is more than a TT and the expectation of what will happen next so much greater.
The most powerful of the bunch is the 260kW Lumina with its bipolar family/hooligan status. At R467 400 ours was the cheaper automatic option and it’s an alternative conveyance to the others for the price. The car went through a mild facelift in 2011 with a revised bumper, headlights, different alloys and a new multimedia system being the main points. However the most noticeable aspect of the cabin is the vast size and the boot is also the biggest in class. Detractors may point out that the touchscreen could be smoother and the steering wheel made smaller but as generic as some of these parts may seem they’re not enough to distract from the V8 centrepiece.
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