The first step to making a drift run look cool is driving a cool looking car. This article will focus on how you can make your car stand out in the eyes of spectators as well as judges. After all, you can run the best line of the day but if your car looks like a pile of shit than nobody is going to care. Even if you win a competition you still have to go home looking like a loser.
The first step to properly styling a drift car is choosing an overall theme that all parts will sort of fall under. Are you going for a street styled, clean and simplistic look? Or do you prefer mad radical and in your face track-car style that screams “look at me!”? There are all sorts of happy mediums between the two, but every part on your car must flow with the overall theme that you should have picked out before assembling parts. You must have a vision of what everything will look like assembled and complete.
Once you have an overall theme picked out the first step to properly styling a drift car is choosing what aero you will go with. If you are thinking of going with a more street styled and clean lined theme, then something like Vertex aero with minimalistic lines and clean styling is a great choice. Pair a subtle front bumper with some very clean and simple side skirts, and your car will be sure to impress everyone. Once you have the fronts figured out, a rear bumper that completes the clean and street look should be picked out. In a street styled car, a rear wing is entirely optional. Some people like to run no wing and let the aero and wheels do the talking. Some prefer to run a very clean lip wing such as the Supermade, which is my personal favorite. Another very cool option is the GP sports three piece lip wing which combines a center section with two side pieces on the fenders to give a low profile and sleek accent to subtle and street styled aero.
Once the front bumper, sideskirts, rear bumper, and rear wing have been chose, a you must choose what fenders to go with. Usually with a street styled theme you should try to pick some sort of widebody fenders that aren’t super aggressive but still allow easy changing when crashes and love-touches happen on track. Twenty millimeter fenders out front and fifty millimeters out back is a typical setup for a street styled car. Some drivers even prefer to stick with stock metal fenders but the reparability and functionality often suffers. Fenders are often overlooked but can truly make or break the overall presence of a drift car. Too narrow and the car looks timid and weak. Too wide for the aero you run and the cars look bulgy and out of place.
If you want to go with a track styled and very loud and obnoxious drift car theme than there are countless options waiting for you. The most ridiculous and obscene aero that most people think of is BN Sports. BN lines are extremely flared and often extend a cars overall width by up to 6 inches. A flared front bumper paired with flared side skirts and rear bumper scream for attention and make the car look similar to a hovercraft. Some other wild and crazy aero companies are Works9 and Origin, both offering similar styled kits that are known for being loud and crazy. The common theme for a track styled car is to go as wide as possible and have very sharp, flat lines that help accentuate super wide wheels that extend far beyond even wide fenders.
