If you want to drift the crap out of your sad little wrong-wheel drive hatchback, the ticket is apparently PVC piping. Just watch Alexi from YouTube channel Noriyaro learn how to turn kei cars with PVC wrapped-tires into tail-happy drift machines.
If you’re sad that your car sends power to the steering wheels, and skid-plates and lunch trays just aren’t doing it for you, Polyvinyl Chloride may solve your life’s most pressing problem. And if you read our last story on this crazy concept, but are keen to learn what it’s actually like behind the wheel, just watch Alexi cut his teeth drifting some dirt-cheap 660 cc, three-cylinder kei cars with plastic drain pipe wrapped around their rear tires:
Alexi, who has plenty of experience drifting rear-wheel drive cars, initially has no trouble ripping a bunch of donuts in a little Daihatsu Mira, but where he struggles is with the figure-eights, saying:
Doing donuts is a fairly similar feeling using the accelerator to a regular drift car...the transition here is weird.
Eventually, he figures out the key: since the front wheels are pulling the front end, simply applying that gas pedal earlier while counter-steering sends the front of the car in the same direction as the rear, ultimately avoiding a spinout, and yielding beautiful transitions from clockwise to counterclockwise and vise versa.
After nervously partaking in some tandem runs just a few feet from another kei car, and also trying out a turbocharged Suzuki Alto, Alexi clearly becomes a true believer in PVC drifting, saying numerous times that it feels remarkably similar to normal, rear-wheel drive drifting:
I’ll be honest, it doesn’t feel too different to regular drifting...This is a lot closer to real drifting than I really want to admit.
Ok, Alexi does admit that there are a few differences, drawing a parallel with inverted video game controls, saying:
You know when you have a video game, and it’s like a shooting game. And some people like to look up by pressing up, and some people like to look up by pressing down? It’s like that. It’s like someone’s just handed you the controls, but they’re the wrong way around. That’s what it feels like.
Still, Alexi is a fan, concluding the video by saying PVC drifting offers “All the benefits of drifting, and none of the costs!” It’s quiet, dirt cheap, relatively environmentally friendly, and it actually feels like legitimate drifting. Not bad.