You walk out to the backyard and stare down your favourite grassy slope. With a jitter of excitement, you roll out the bright yellow plastic and attach the hose. As you hurl yourself down to the ground your mind is clear: you’re not worried that your face will soon become a brake. As you stand up with grass in your teeth, you think to yourself, “will there ever be a better feeling than this?” For some, the answer is no; that mouth-full of plastic, water and grass seems to be enough for one life time. For others, however, a slip ‘n’ slide was just a taste of how fun sliding around could really be.
Tiffany is one of those other people; her R32 Skyline is testament to that. She bought it stock standard three years ago, during which time her goals for the car have remained simple and to the point: make it fast, make it slide and do it in style. Yep, you can add another name to that short list of female drifters because this girl really knows how to slide. She’s been trained by some of Australia’s best drifters (Cameron Hill, Darren Appleton and John Caine) and is ready to get out there and have some fun now that the car’s complete. Although competitive drift is bigger than ever in Australia, Tiffany assured me, “I’m not really interested in competing professionally at the moment. maybe when I’m a bit more confident. I’m just really looking forward to taking the car out on the track again.”
When she first told me she’d built the car for drifting, I was a little more than surprised. No, not only because she’s a good looking young girl that knows a wheel nut from a crankshaft, but because of the car itself. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a drift car that looks so clean; there’s a reason why they’re called “drift pigs” after all. Tiffany says it’s a common reaction, “wherever I go, the car gets a lot of stares”, and it’s easy to see why. The first thing that catches your eye is the colour. Yellow is loud, but throw in a subtle green pearl and you have a colour that pops instead of screams. Tiffany said, “the colour choice was inspired by Tsuyoshi Tezuka’s R32 Bee-Racing D1 drift car”, and it looks right at home on her car. The genuine, hand-made Vertex body-kit continues the visual impact but does so without detracting from the factory lines. The founder of Vertex, Mr. Takahiro Ueno, was on the ball when he set out to design kits that were “simple and aggressive simultaneously”. Although the paint work and body kit catches your eyes initially, it’s the wheels that round out the package and hold your stare. The wide, low-offset Work Meisters really are a statement in style.
Still, this car offers far more than just good looks; when Tiffany said she wanted to make it fast she wasn’t joking. You won’t find an RB20-DET when you pop the hood (which just happens to be the lightweight GTR variety) but, instead, an RB25-DET from the R33 GTS-T. A 550hp Garrett GT3071R turbo ups the ante from the standard unit and does its job in helping the engine produce a usable 393whp. A 550hp Bosch fuel pump ensures an adequate supply of fuel while a Sard fuel pressure regulator and Nismo 555cc injectors round out the fuel delivery system. Engine management is looked after by the widely used A’PEXi Power FC.
Given that this car is a daily driver, all the power in the world amounts to nothing without reliability. That’s why the engine has been rebuilt from the ground up and strengthened with ACL main and big end race bearings. Just as reliability is a must for a street car, attitude is equally as important for a drift car. To that extent, you can’t go accusing the high mount turbo, large front mount intercooler or 3.5-inch Kakimoto exhaust system of being conservative. However, they’re only part of the picture and if we could print sound we’d happily show you the rest; the noise this thing makes is hellish! On boost, a screamer pipe opens up and produces a roar that would make a well known group of 300 Spartans cower. This is not to say the car sounds like a bunch of screaming middle age men! Instead, imagine a hive of giant killer bees attacking a pride of lions as the Spartans stand by and sneeze. Yes, it sounds more like that.
Still, straight line performance and attitude can only take you so far; a well sorted drift car needs well sorted handling. Tiffany has seen to it that the car delivers on this front as well. Stiff JIC Magic coil overs take care of body roll while JIC Magic caster bars help improve steering response and controllability (important for holding an extreme angle through a slide). A GTR front strut brace and Spats rear strut brace also do their job to improve chassis stiffness and keep the body controlled on the limit.
Of course, the most important component of any steering system is the driver and Tiffany has made sure the interior gets out of her way while she’s doing her thing. She has achieved this quite nicely by tossing out a large portion of it. Function comes before form in the cockpit. Up front, there’s a single Bride bucket seat to lock Tiffany into place while the sure-to-be-scared passenger gets a copy of a tuner magazine to help settle their nerves. I’m sure the magazine will get some use too because the only plans Tiffany has for the car now is for it to be driven the way it should be. Rest assured, the smoke on the horizon isn’t a fire, it’s just Tiffany getting her fix of her own Slip ‘n’ Slide.
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