Bonkers Drift Machine Proves You Can Reuse An Old Nascar Race Car

Drifting has always been one of our favorite motorsport genres. As little as we know about it, it’s perfectly clear that the driver and the car play equally important roles in this tire-smoking ballet. The best part is that there are very few limitations when it comes to the race machine as opposed to most other motorsport categories. You can basically assemble any kind of monstrosity and race it as long as it has enough power, proper suspension angles, and a decent cooling system.

But what if you want to reuse an old race car and turn it into a new drift car? This was the idea Aaron Losey had after always trying to make drifting more sustainable. In a new video from Lary Chen on YouTube, Losey tells us the story of how he turned an old circle track race car into a drift machine. An absolutely bonkers drift machine, that is.

This is a rather incredible mashup of components, to begin with. It features a tubular chassis of a Nascar race car combined with the front subframe of a Chevrolet Chevelle. A V8 engine and a four-speed manual transmission came with the donor car Losey bought and he admits he had to do very few modifications to the engine and axles as they were already properly tuned. Will it ever get an actual Nascar-inspired body? Most likely yes, but for the time being it’s used in this stripped-out form.

A significant amount of work has been done to the suspension, though. This machine was originally a one-direction race car and Losey had to convert it to go both directions. Also, substantial tweaks have been made to the steering geometry to make it possible for the car to go sideways and compete against other drift cars. All the springs (which are insanely easy to be adjusted), the shocks, the brakes, and others. In this form, the suspension is very adjustable.

The V8 engine has been kept pretty much stock aside from a new carburetor as the original one was simply too small. This small tweak gave the 5.7-liter mill 40 additional horsepower for a peak of around 370 hp at the wheels. With a few other mods, Losey expects the power to go notably up.