Article 1: drifting
I am simply appalled at why people give drifting more credit than it deserves when it comes down to getting fast track times. Lots of people who enjoy watching option, drift tengoku and initial d seem to be easily influenced by what they see and start to believe that to drift is the fastest way around the track. Now this is not to say that all people who watch these shows think this, but a good amount of people do.
I�ve heard enough times on message boards over video games where people say �oh if I could only just drift some more� or �oh yea so I drifted and passed all the computer cars��..well stop dreaming and please come to the realization that drifting is slow. Maybe in the video game drifting is faster�in which case it is a very poor game and is not realistic at all�why play it?
Fact is, drifting is NOT fast and is NOT the fastest way around the track and never will be. The newly brought up argument of drift vs grip is stupid; drift will never be greater than grip in terms of speed.
Then people will start to argue about race car drivers in jgtcc drifting when they are under pressure and really want to pass some people�well they drift not by choice�they drift because there is no other available aggressive line for them to take�and by drifting, they will have setup their car beneficially and in an advantage over their competitor for the next oncoming corner.
Then why is drifting so popular? It�s simply fun to watch and perform but that is all. It is a skill where a mad amount of money is needed and one needs to develop a love for the smell of burnt rubber and clutches�otherwise u�ll just puke.
Power slides is another issue�yes, cars with high power will power slide through corners�.that is a fast route around corners because they have the suspension that is able to keep the car stable at such speeds and still let the car slide outwards.
You may now start to wonder and argue with me on this issue of whether or not true race cars do incorporate this �power slide� technique. Well watch some in car videos of jgtcc cars carefully and u will notice it. Maybe the term power slide isn�t a good term�.shall I call it a minor 4 wheel drift? It is being able to enter the corner with enough control to clip the apex and yet have enough speed to have the car slide out to the outer edge of the track as it is turning�.thus fully utilizing the amount of traction and power the car has. The slide/drift may be so small that it cannot be seen by the untrained eye, but trust me, it�s there. Even f-1�s do this.
Article 2: initial D scene
why initial D is our worst enemy
obviously, this anime has raised the popularity of the corolla gts to an astoundingly high level. on top of that, they have the dumb arcade game that further promotes this car to idiot ricers.
now the once never looked upon corolla gts is high on the wanted list of uneducated morons who want to buy a car to modify.
soon enuf it will be even harder to attain one of these cars because of all the kids who want to be takumi and drive like inane fools all over the road. the image of this car will be severely tainted since it is turning out to be the rice box of choice. with time, i bet ppl will look on the corolla gts as some ppl look upon hondas in general.
that being said, let's expect insurance to rise for these cars and less good parts for us to salvage due to the massive accidents that these kids will cause in their cars
boo in initial d. someone kill the person who keeps continuing with the comics.
i have already heard of stories of corollas being stolen. there are enough on club4ag. and someone's ae92 just recently got stolen off of my friend�s street. sounds good doesnt it?
i parked outside of the commerce gate arcade a while ago...and all these dorks come out eyeing my car. bah. burn the initial d games. wipe those images out of their heads�
I shouldn�t only pinpoint initial d and blame that one source�as initial d in itself is not bad and is an entertaining cartoon�.but since initial d is in a world where magazines like super street and movies like fast an the furious exist, it does not make for good education to a crowd of wannabe race car driver/car enthusiasts.
What has built up is a community of car lovers who own cars and yet know next to nothing about them. On top of that, they believe everything portrayed by the movies/cartoons/shows and ignorantly follow any trend that arises. Enough people say that �oh man, I gotta get nos� and fail to realize that nitrous is not only referred to as �nos��it�s nitrous, n2o, laughing gas etc. people say �oh I want the one where I press the button on the wheel and the nos turns on��fuck off. That�s not how it works.
I may sound angry at these people, but that�s because I am. They are uneducated and follow the �in� trends. This is not what car enthusiasts are about. It�s a passion. It�s a lifestyle. A car enthusiast is one that knows everything about his/her car, know every little detail about it with regards to specification and what is has and works day and night just to get the right parts for the car�.someone who eats cup noodles just to save money for forged rims and someone hardcore enough to import things from other countries just to make sure they have a proper part on their car.
A car enthusiast is not someone who blindly follows trends. A car enthusiast is one that set�s trends and starts things on his/her own. Look at the ae86 crowd today�this is nearly 20 years after the car is introduced. Why the hype now? Where was the hype before? Simple: more than half of these people are simply bandwagoners and watch too much initial d.
The car enthusiast community doesn�t need these sorts of people. It is these shit for brains that make a bad name for us all, start all this street racing garbage and support the community of rice. 6 years ago there were no �altezza lights��.if there were, they would be called �supra lights� as the supra was the first Toyota to pioneer those type of tail lights. 6 years ago we didn�t have import fest where a car with a stock engine and tacky body kit wins the competition��nuff said.
Article 3: power
B
Power, power, power. This is all people want these days�but why? Why invest in hp and torque when they cant even maximize the potential of their bone stock car? Here, let me illustrate: john doe who just graduated high school and who�s rich parents just bought him an E46 M3 and decides he wants to race at the race track. He think�s he�s kool and all cos his car has power, looks sweet and get�s all the girls he wants�.
Before heading off to the track, he decides his car needs modifications in order to be deemed as �track worthy�. So john doe goes off to get himself a full ac scnitzer coil over kit, gets a racing dynamic ecu and dinan 364 degree cams�so he heads off to the track where he notices something: he sees a guy driving a 1989 240sx on the track�he snickers at the guy�s 150hp and proceeds to launch out of the pits and show him what his car is made of�.on the first turn he fails to downshift properly and locks up his rear wheels inducing a spin�mr 240sx passes him and continues to pass him all day long�
A long example but it fully illustrates what I want to talk about: don�t invest in hp when u cant even take your stock car to the limits. There is simply no point. Having more power will just make it harder for u to control. Ok so thinking that, u go and get some tires and suspension instead thinking that�s the right thing to do�.well NO! don�t do that. Please learn how the stock car handles and become comfortable about it�s handling traits. After that then drive the car harder and harder till you finally are able to make full use of it�s power and handling capabilities�once the day where ur skill exceeds what your car can do for u comes, then that is the day where u can say that you have an excuse to start modifying your car.
Out of the box, many people instantly go lower their cars and what not thinking it will only make the car better for them�.well a car is only as good as the driver. It�s up to the driver to take the car to thresholds of where it can perform the best. So before investing in any sort of car modification, I say invest in racing school and then invest your time into learning about how your car handles and reacts to certain input.
I�ve had too many experiences at the track where I see nice nice nice expensive cars get passed by little shitboxes. Having a nice car means nothing. Having power to boast about means nothing! Having the skill to beat on m3�s with your little shitbox is something to boast about�please don�t succumb to what magazines portray and build a car that you cannot even drive properly. Fact is, a car with nicely done up suspension and lots of power is much less forgiving than that of a stock car on 60 profile rubbers. Learn how to drive first, then get the goodies.
Why AE86?
Did you ever read magazines like Road & Track and Car & Driver? I used to spend hours as a highschool kid reading magazines like that. I was especially entranced by articles about the sports cars, captivated by the writers' descriptions of how they behaved at the limits. They really dug it when they got to test a rear-driver that was pointable with the throttle. As the car gods intended it to be, they would say. I decided then that I'd teach myself to drive someday. Really drive.
Then one day, I discovered Keiichi Tsuchiya and his band of automotive miscreants. These guys were everything the Road & Track guys wished they could be. I never once heard these Japanese ex-street racers mention anything about poorly designed cup holders or bad radio placement. All they cared about was how much grip they could extract out of a particular chassis, and whether or not they could get through their 5-lap battle or touge course faster than the jackass of a friend sitting in the car next to them. They unapologetically treated their cars as true toys; they played with them, laughing all the while.
The best part about the little videos I would download was the fact that after they finished beating the shit out of these cars, they'd pull them into the garage and bust out the fat guy with the goofy glasses and talk tech. I'll never forget the segment in the AE86 Special VCD I have in which professional race car drivers like Orido Manibu and Nobuteru Taniguchi put their own personal AE86's up on the hoist and started to pass down little tips and tricks and bits of hachiroku knowledge to anyone fanatical enough to buy and watch a video dedicated to a 15 year old car.
And that, to me, is what being an AE86 head is all about. It's about an unadulterated enthusiasm for something pure: the fun of tuning and driving a car for sport. It's about the thrill of the quest for improvment and the satisfaction of getting there and knowing that you arrived on your own merits. It's about knowing almost every part of your car because you've taken it all apart at one point or another and about knowing its strengths and weaknesses. It's about being up late night in a friend's garage in an attempt to get something done before a track day. It's about knowing five other guys just as nutty as you are who have garage-fuls of spare parts and knowing you could count on them to help you out if the need arose. It's about taking all the set-backs and frustrations of past few weeks or months and turning them into a euphoric eruption of tire screeching and exhaust wail at 8000 rpm.
It's about light weight, Toyota reliability, pop-up lights that make cool noises, high revs, driver feedback, rolled fenders, 50/50 weight distribution, not having enough power to mask your mistakes, a shift lever that goes right into the gear box, tie-wraps and the "hammer method" tuning, accidental tail-out maneuvers and corrective slides, an angry sounding engine, a racing heritage, a reputation as a midnight drift machine, weighty steering, lipped rims and stretched tires, new old TRD stock, not rolling on 18's, hard to find parts, the ability to pull the engine with little more than a pair of pliars and a socket set, not having a stereo, spin turn knobs, negative camber roll-centre adjusters, the sound of side-draught carbs, and that pimping 80's Japanese techno-cheese styling.
It's about the AE86 culture. Based on antiquated technology it may be, you still won't find any better as far as I'm concerned.
-Mr.Sinister from ToyotaNation
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