Drifting still popular?

[quickdodge®]

I'm actually kind of surprised that there are still drift events still coming around. This is a sport that just doesn't seem to be an everlasting one. It seems to be more of a fad sport than one that will have history books written about them. You don't hear near the talk about it like you need just a couple of years ago and you don't hear the usual folks talking about what does go on these days. I've only been to two events and that was only socially as I never have cared for it, but there were a quite a few people attending.

What was the crowd like yesterday? Were there a lot of spectators or was it mostly the participating people that were there?

What do you guys think? Is drifting....drifting? Later, QD.

[JITB]

i dont think its still strong myself... but i never kept up with it..

[Motivation]

You also got to remember what really created this huge craze a few years ago, the reason everyone was talking about it. Tokyo Drift came to theaters. Like any movie, people watch it and think to themselves, "I seen it on TV, and they were a beginner in the movie and in 30 minutes were a pro, I must be better than that guy." So, they go out and try it. It becomes more of a fad then it does really a lifestyle for them. Now, this obviously doesn't go for everyone. I know a few people around this area, that are truly in love with the sport. They eat, breathe, and sleep everything that is and has to do with drifting. But I believe, that when the craze was so huge, Hollywood was the one that made it that way. Before, the people who drifted kept in on the DL and done it just for them. After is was made into a big deal, it seemed that everyone wanted to say they knew how to drift, even while driving a cavalier or honda. Just my .02

[Nerdsrock22]

I have always enjoyed watching it; though I have no experience doing it, (or driving a RWD car, for that matter. I was actually surprised at the turnout yesterday, way more folks were there than the one in November, but then again, the weather was a little better.

I can certainly understand QD's point though about it being a fad. I would imagine that its extremely expensive to do, and extremely risky to practice, with regards to legal ramifications and safety hazards.

That being said, I really enjoy the huge variety of cars out on the track; from a V8 Camaro to a V8-swapped G35, and then all the crazy 240's.

I hope it sticks around for a few more years.

[ksniperfox]

vteckidd made a good lil paragraph i read somewhere on here about how drifting was going away, and why. several valid points. ill see if i can find it.

[ksniperfox]

found it




2) BIG events will cease to exist. No more NOPI Nationals, no more HOT IMPORT NIGHTS, no more FORMULA D. I predict they all are gone by next year. If not the following year. With gas prices, lack of interest, lack of payouts, lack of sponsors, its just not worth going for ANYONE.

3) Drifing was ALWAYS a FAD. It will start to dissappear from the professional level. As a BUSINESS , which is what it needs to be to survive and grow, it is a HORRIBLE model.
A) Drifting shares almost NOTHING in common with other motorsports in terms of accessability and marketability. Where do you go drifting on a saturday night? Friday night?
B) Its too expensive to drift. at the rate you go through tires, even if you are in some ricer midnight club drifting team, you gotta have tires.
C) For the tire companys it sucks. I mean look at Falken, Maxxis, Bridgestone, etc. Do you really think that spectators at a DRIFT event are thinking "wow im going to go buy their tires to drift on!" Hell no. So essentially their sponsorship dollars are being wasted. Why advertise if your demographic isnt going to buy your product. you know how many times i sold a Maxxis Tire at B***ground? ZERO. you know how many DRIFT CARS we built, ZERO. Whose paying $175 per tire to go **** it up in 5 min? Whose building a $10,000-15000 car to run it into a wall?

So what you essentially have is this motorsport, that is judged on opinion, and has no model for bringing in revenue. Eventually the companies will start to see that and it will dry up. Why spend $150,000 on a motorsport that gives you no return?

At least in drag Racing you see people that will go buy Skunk2, Competition clutch, Ferrea, Edelbrock, etc based on what they see, etc. You can go to a track on a friday night anywhere in the country an practice. Hell even street racing is still around.

In Short: Drifting dissappears in the next 2 years TOPS.

4) The Greatest Illusion in the Sport Compact Industry. China. Period. EVERYTHING IS MADE OVERSEAS, if its not, that company will NOT LAST.
I see friends going out of business every week cause they are fighting over $15 sale for an AEM part or something. Its a joke. The AMerican companies had this illusion that their products were made in house, developed, etc its all bullsh!t. Everything is outsourced overseas and brought in, repackaged, and marketed.

What happened was these american companies got greedy. They didnt control the market. They made EVERYONE with a SSN a "dealer" and didnt enforce pricing rules. so now you have 1000 AEM Dealers that are all selling the same product competing against each other so what do they do? they have to have the "lowest price" . So they atart cutting it by $5, $10, $50, $75 until you meet the EBAY guy. The guy that has no shop, no overhead, no employees, so what does he car if he only makes $5, $5 is $5 to him. To a shop, with overhead, its not worth the phone call.

So the Ebay people killed the Sport Compact Market parts and the Companies did NOTHING about it.

And why should they? in their eyes they had a feeding frenzy over a product they had $10 in, and their 1000 dealers were paying $250 for it and trying to fight over a 1% markup. The only one making money was the company.

Well then the dealers die out, cause they dry up, go out of business, cant make any money. etc. you just lost alot of your Wholesale program, an now you are going out of business.

Expect to see alot of wholesalers go under. Which means access to parts is limited and prices go up.

So the comments i hear about Ebay **** and CHINA ****, newsflash, 98% of all your high dollar JDM parts are made in a factory by a Chinaman :) thats fact.

There will be a proliferation of people that start going exclusively to Overseas manufacturing. theres just too much money in it. Custom will become a thing of the past as efficiency and availability will come first. Cost is low, profit is high. its very attractive and everyone is moving that way. Look at CHinas numbers in the last 15 years.

Expect your favorite name brand whatever to be knocked off or replicated. Everything from Gibson Guitars to Volk wheels are being made in China RIGHT NOW. The Chinese are getting GOOD soon youll never be able to tell the difference between your $4000 wheels and their "$100 wheels" in terms of quality and contruction.

5) The rebeginning. Youll start to see stuff go back to how it was 10 years ago. Small little meets, little hang out spots, little localized events, little car shows. Itll get back to just having fun, little to no payouts etc. Corporate sponsorship will all but dry up for the most part. So that means people will be back to spending their own money GASP!
Expect street racing to grow again, as more an more people hanging out it usually leads to that anyway. Even last night i was coming home and was going down 138 and i saw 30 cars at the old QT i used to go to. APparently they are still racing.

6) Expect forums to grow in participation, users. Just an outlet for people.

7) Expect internet advertising to drop in terms of cars and car parts. Companies will realize its just not worth it in this time right now, UNLESS they are selling parts i mentioned.

8) Performance market is dead, expect it to continue to die out as gas increases and people start heading toward the NEWER CARS. lets face it the popular cars 5 years ago were EG hatches, EFs, 240s, etc. They are almost 20 years old now! They will start drying up very soon along with their motor supplies. Forcing people to move into the newer chassis which cost more to mod, and cost more period. So i expect this trend of "make my car JDM first, go fast second" to last for a few years before people start figuring out how to crack the OBD2B+ cars.

So yeah, major restructuring, major changes are in store IMO

[speedminded]

It's a cycle. Everything comes goes. Everything is getting more expensive: tires, gas, etc...yet a majority of peoples pay is not being compensated for it. As VTECKIDD mentioned in the other thread, everything has been dying for years, it's not just the drifting. There will be those that stick with it hardcore forever then those that will get back into it as a new movie comes out.

When's the last time anyone's heard about a bass competition? In the mid 90's you couldn't have a car conversation that didn't involve that...I haven't heard about people being competitive in probably 10 years but maybe because that's not my scene? Clean and crisp sound is the key, not distortion that makes the car's wipers next to you rattle.

I'm into automobiles for the love of grit and oil and the smell of race fuel and burning rubber, bloody knuckles, pride in building quality things and driving the crap out of them. I've always hated car shows other than classics because 4/5 participants are what I call 25 and 50 foot show cars that are practically glued together...fiberglass body work and whoever will do the paint the cheapest. As long as it looks ok from a few car lengths it's all good right? I will say the HIN atmosphere was awesome, by including the nightlife that is a huge part of the car scene anyways and it's unfortunate it didn't take off here.

[swaythecoupe]

i don't know about that, vtec kidd has a well put argument, but i don't see how drifting doesn't attract customers to certain business. yes its true, people wont buy hankooks performance tires to go burn them on a drift course and yes no one in their right mind will put 10000 dollars into a car that they plan on running into the wall anyway but the average jack*** on the street has or will see a car drifting and say "that's pretty cool". the average no name guy that sees that, will be the one that goes and buys all that trash that says jdm because he wants people to see his car and wants them to believe that he too can do what they do. the "sport" itself will definitely crash i believe but as far as drifting goes i really don't see it going away. not because of hit movies or because of sweet shows that people go to. because people slide for the fun of sliding. its not so great as a sport but if you think of it as an attraction, people do go to these things to have a good time, and as far as im concerned the sponsorships and companies investing into these have and will market not to drivers or drifters but to that jack*** watching him drive a sweet-looking car. I have noticed in my area alot of 240sx's that are all f'ed-up with jdm body kits sweet name badging and these people dont know how any of what they are buying works but they have the stuff. so i think drifting markets pretty well. just my two cents

[quickdodge®]

I have noticed in my area alot of 240sx's that are all f'ed-up with jdm body kits sweet name badging and these people dont know how any of what they are buying works but they have the stuff. so i think drifting markets pretty well. just my two cents

People were doing that long before drifting came around, dude. And they'll continue to do so long after it's gone. Later, QD.

[EJ25RUN]

Hell no. It was just another tuner fad.

[Kaiser]

Drifting is dying in the states. And I can't say I'm sad to see it go. I'm biased, but I'd rather see "Near-to-Stock" Touring Car survive than a great many things out there, but I don't even know if that will do terribly well.

[BKgen®]

I'd rather watch drifting than Nascar. :2cents:

[NewGen33]

I see it going the way of say Monster Jam. You will have the factory backing for certain groups that will still have different drifting leagues or we will just be left with one major league in the U.S. The groups will travel and they will use the cars for marketing of the cars and parts.

[puregroove]

The event was really coo, yesterday. A lot of the people there were friends and families of a lot of the drivers.

Personally, I enjoy it and think it's fun. It's a way for me to push my car to the limits. The drag strip isn't practical for my ae 'cause it's not fast. but with the way my suspension is set up, I can easily cut the rearend loose and roast some tires.

Because my car is underpowered, I have to constantly rev it up to keep the rearend loose. As for the cost of tires, I run 14s or 15s. It's easy to find them cheap--unlike 17s and 18s that some of these bigger cars run.

Normal driving will wear out a pair anyway and they won't be any good for driving in the rain. Why not just roast 'em?

I have no intention of going pro or anything. I just love to do it. A lot of these events are grassroots. There are well-established drag strips out there where you can see how fast your car is. There's not a track out there where you can just slide around and act a donkey. Hence, these drift events. Grassroots is always here to stay. :yes:

As for abusing my car...Something breaks on the car. I replace it with something that will hold up to the abuse. It's kind of fun, but costly. You learn that a lot of the oem/factory parts can't withstand some of the things that you drive the car to do.

All in all.. it's all in fun. :yes: :D

[Atlblkz06]

Tell this to the "slide or die" dumbassses... lol

[KREEP]

I like watching drifting to see the noobs fail and hit walls ...other than that drifting sucks ass and is the most pointless sport

[Me86Rob]

The event was really coo, yesterday. A lot of the people there were friends and families of a lot of the drivers.

Personally, I enjoy it and think it's fun. It's a way for me to push my car to the limits. The drag strip isn't practical for my ae 'cause it's not fast. but with the way my suspension is set up, I can easily cut the rearend loose and roast some tires.

Because my car is underpowered, I have to constantly rev it up to keep the rearend loose. As for the cost of tires, I run 14s or 15s. It's easy to find them cheap--unlike 17s and 18s that some of these bigger cars run.

Normal driving will wear out a pair anyway and they won't be any good for driving in the rain. Why not just roast 'em?

I have no intention of going pro or anything. I just love to do it. A lot of these events are grassroots. There are well-established drag strips out there where you can see how fast your car is. There's not a track out there where you can just slide around and act a donkey. Hence, these drift events. Grassroots is always here to stay. :yes:

As for abusing my car...Something breaks on the car. I replace it with something that will hold up to the abuse. It's kind of fun, but costly. You learn that a lot of the oem/factory parts can't withstand some of the things that you drive the car to do.

All in all.. it's all in fun. :yes: :D

x2. its fun to toss your car around. im no pro by any means, but i have decent car control. im trying to get my Z built so i can do some amature events, but untill then its off to empty parking lots at late hours lol. as far as it dying off....i just think people are now getting an idea of how costly the sport is and that not everybody can jump in a car and do it.

[On_Her_Face]

I'm actually kind of surprised that there are still drift events still coming around. This is a sport that just doesn't seem to be an everlasting one. It seems to be more of a fad sport than one that will have history books written about them. You don't hear near the talk about it like you need just a couple of years ago and you don't hear the usual folks talking about what does go on these days. I've only been to two events and that was only socially as I never have cared for it, but there were a quite a few people attending.

What was the crowd like yesterday? Were there a lot of spectators or was it mostly the participating people that were there?

What do you guys think? Is drifting....drifting? Later, QD.

I didn't think drifting would still happen, but I thought the same about rap when it came out, no look.

[matthewAPM]

I have started to see a great shift in people from drifting to time trial/ HPDE stuff. Look at all the top import magazines. Every issue has something about a Time Attack event or car in it. Where is all the drifting going?

Its all about bang for the buck. If a guy can spend half the money to get on the track and be competitive and have fun, he will do it. And thats why so many are moving to track events and not drifting.

[SPOOLIN]

The days of sport compact drag racing championship series' have pretty much ended...but i believe now its better for us because you have someone like IFO bringing multiple race to same the region all over the country...and now we have racers creating massive once a year races themselves for the racers that have massive payouts and no huge overhead to travel with.

Drag racing is going to keep on but i think drifting has a limited time scale left in it.

[Dville nismo]

It's alright, but i wasn't ever a huge fan of it.