My friend Harrison Johnson has the best drift car in the world. It's not a 240SX, a Z car, a Mustang or an FD RX-7. Nope. It's a Volvo. The same Volvo his mom used to drive him to kindergarten.
This 1990 740, like any good drift Volvo, has a big honkin' V8 under the hood for additional lulz. It started life as a $100 beater in need of a new automatic transmission, so the obvious fix was to swap in a manual transmission and a 1993 Saleen 5.0 engine. It was Harrison's mom's daily driver for a long time, and it's been going sideways ever since.
Harrison's usually the one going sideways in it nowadays. Having grown up in a gearhead family, there was a steady supply of motorized, wheeled vehicles for Harrison to hoon growing up, and plenty of space to do it.
He was lighting up this car's tires before he could legally drive it on the street.
If you need to kill tires, this is the vehicle you want.
We've featured drift Volvos before, but few have quite the storied pedigree of actually being Mom's car that this one does.
Seeing a car that you'd never expect to go sideways at full oppo is a real treat. In a scene that's completely dominated by the usual imports, we need more unlikely driftmobiles in this world. Drift Volvos. Drift wagons. If someone built a rear-wheel-drive Mirage to drift, they'd be my hero forever.
The drift Volvo has gotten racier over the years, now with a cage and a stripped interior to run in the Lone Star Drift Pro-Am series.
Here's the full story of Harrison and the drift Volvo. Enjoy.
Harrison is V8-swapping an FC RX-7 to run next year, but the Volvo is still the best. It's just the best. Ever.