,
A lot of power from big displacement and low boost is the way I feel that engine development is going. Ultimately, this will probably reduce costs. Matt Fields rocks a Vortex supercharger on a built LS3 bottom end. I think he makes around 900 whp with a fairly economical off the shelf set up.
Pajiro Goodin did not buy Dai Yoshihara’s old S13. He is in fact running a Garrett big single turbo on an LS3 engine. Pat is making 860 plus hp with low stress at a reasonably low cost. Both Pat and Matt are very competitive with reasonable budgets.
I think the world’s first Battle of the 1000 hp Cars took place at the Long Beach round when Dai Yoshihara and Chis Forsberg faced off, Dai in the Turbo BRZ and Chris with his AEM controlled Nitrous system in his 370Z. Dai got eliminated as his car was in a very early development state but he did put up a decent fight. Although this battle was somewhat groundbreaking it was sort of anti climatic.
If anyone disagrees with our premise of V8 and boost it would be these two. Justin Pawlak and Kyle Mohan are bucking the trend. Justin sports 860 whp of highly refined NA Ford power while Kyle runs a 3 rotor turbo rotary. Both are very competitive. Vaughn Gittin Jr also packs 840 plus Roush Yates horsepower. Fredric Aasbo does it with his 4 cylinder Scion Tc. Despite this I see the trend of low boost V8 engines becoming more and more popular coming.
Then there is Odi. Odi Bakchis can bring the pain in one of the lowest powered cars in the FD field. His turbo nitrous LS3 puts out “only” 600 hp.
Like it or not the turbo V8’s are probably going to win the power wars. Reliability and broad powerbands are going to make them popular just like the V8 first did when it was introduced. Sorry JDM fans. The new super power technical terror cars appeal to new drift fans who come to see the excitement, smoke and speed.
I do have an idea to appeal to those who want more traditional drifting. Lets make Pro 2 more of a pro stock class and limit rear tire size to 245 and 265 across the board. Make it so the cars have to keep their stock fenders and quarter panels. The 265 tire cars would have to weigh 2800 lbs (this is the class for bigger domestic cars). Minimum weight for the 245 class would be 2500 lbs. Make it so the cars have to run motors from the same brand. This would encourage factory involvement and bring more sponsor dollars in. Heck the class could be called be called pro stock just like in drag racing. I think these cars will have a hard time using more than 600 whp.
I think these two classes might make a whole new level of interest and appeal to fans in a way much like drag racing. What do you think?
