A morning with little planned led us via the Shinkansen to Nagoya and then a short local train journey to
Kids Heart, a drift car garage/dealership. The garage manager is D1GP driver
Tsuyoshi Tezuka. Kids Heart also made the 'factory' Nissan SilEightys in limited numbers
I really liked this 'Zenki' (early) S14 Silvia
Still not sure if I like Toyota JZX110 Verossas or not
Toyota JZX100 Mark II, they like chrome wheels at Kids Heart, well they have good roads for them so why not
Not only do Kids Heart sell drift cars, they also buy in cars and prepare them for drifting
As seen by these subframes....
and a ER34 4 door up on the ramp, pity the staff were all in the roasting hot office watching drift DVD's and drinking coffee, its an easy life working in a drift car garage in Japan, well apart from the nice girl slaving away in the office
But they still find time to make some lovely cars, this PS13 Silvia being a good example
The main reason I came to Kids Heart and to Japan!! Tezukas D1 JZX81 Mark II, which is my favourite D1GP car, ever! Under the pink paintwork there is a 600bhp 2JZ-GTE with a Trust T78 turbo, Kei Office suspension and plenty of other drift mods. This car is pure evil in my eyes, it should really be kept in a cage!! Tezuka now drives the
Bee*Racing B324R Skyline in D1GP but he still finds time to bring this car out for practice days and Kids Hearts own drift series. Look closely in the background and you will see
Chris and Tezuka having a chat. A very nice guy like everyone we met in Japan, he remembered me from Silverstone in 2006! Small world. Check out Tezukas blog to the right to see what he gets up to as a lot of what goes on at Kids Heart and in D1 is mentioned
Heres a video of the car in action:
Santa Pod was the venue for Round 4 of the European Drift Championship, where Phil Morrison in the Driftworks 2JZ powered S15 Silvia was definatley smoking things up!
This was the second of 2 rounds that Team Orange from Japan attended with their RWD converted Imprezas. After a strong competition it was Nobushige Kumakubo (on the right of the photo) that came 1st, and his friend and team mate, Katzuhiro Tanaka (left) that placed 2nd
But it was not all plain sailing from Team Orange, when Tanaka spun during the final, then again Kumakubo spun on the previous run, it took 6 runs for Kumakubo to win
Not so much luck for Chris 'Paz' Parry in his S2000 powered AE86, suffering this bad crash during qualifying, but the damage is not as bad as it looks and the car will return
Mark 'Sidewaysbuff' Luney takes the Santa Pod R32 GTS-T out for a few demo runs, and gave me a passenger run in 1 of them, Cheers Buff!!
The next day there was a team comp, Team Orange took a well fought victory, practicing with the other drivers, above and below but even though they are regarded as the best in the world they still faced good opposition
Team Green will be more impressive next time round after making a big improvement
Team Driftworks fielded the only 3 car team
