Final Bout 4: The Top-Shelf of Drifting
PART I.
THE FEELING
I’ve had many conversations about Final Bout and each time I can’t help but mention how there’s truly no other event like it here in the states. I know people into drifting are a bit unusual to say the least, but very rarely does a drift event draw people from all over as much as Final Bout does. I myself flew out from Las Vegas just to attend, but there were people that not only came from other countries, but had their cars shipped there as well. All of those miles traveled, that effort expended just to fling these prohibitively expensive machines sideways around a go-kart track in the middle of rural, small town Wisconsin. I mean think about that, truly think about it and ask yourself, does that sound a little bit crazy? The answer is yes, but that’s what makes it so special.
I’m sure dear reader, that you’ve been to a handful of drift events in your life. You’re probably very familiar with the sights and sounds of your local grass root events. There are usually maybe one or two really nice cars out there that day, surgically cutting up the course, but there’s also a lot of stinkers. I mean just absolute skullduggery personified into an almost two ton hunk of metal. Loud, missing panels, poor paint, all go no show, also known as the standard drift missile that haunts your local track. Every year Final Bout puts on an event, I can assure you there’s none of that. Presentation counts for Final Bout, which results in the field dotted with cars of various colors, rocking crazy kits, top tier wheels and parts I can only dream about owning.
Now that I’ve painted the picture, let's discuss the details. There was a competition of some kind, both for teams and solo drivers, and I couldn’t tell you much more than that. I’m certain a person with a more apt mind or maybe even a plan going into the event might have recorded those details, but not this guy. Maybe next time. Personally I was too lost in the spectacle and at the end of it I think that’s what counts. I’m not watching Sunday night football here, I’m watching dudes like me in cars vastly cooler than my own go sideways and make a show of it.I think that’s another thing that makes Final Bout so great. Drifting, as much as the drivers enjoy it, is a spectator sport and Final Bout has a lot for you to spectate. If you are of the more competitive nature and you follow a lot of these grassroot teams, then guess what, you get to watch your favorite dude-bros in drift machines duke it out on one of the greatest tracks in the states, but if you just like drifting then you’re in luck because wouldn’t you believe it you’re at one hell of an event for drifting.
I usually stalk the pits and capture details of a lot of my favorite cars while I’m at Final Bout, but this time was different. I spent the large majority of my days at the track struggling to use my camera infield. I walked away with some three thousand photos at the end of the weekend, which is a lot, but still not nearly enough to capture the event in it’s full detail. Lord only knows just how many cars were at the event, each one of them feature worthy in their own right, but with only so much time in the day I tried my best to get the longest exposure panning shots that the day would allow. Lucky for me Wisconsin weather shined on me by not shining at all actually, making the familiar trackside look like it was planted somewhere in dreary old England. All that to say, I was able to slow that shutter way down and to quote someone here “I may have gone too far in some places.” In hindsight, maybe I should have got more of those bread and butter trackside photos to go with these and maybe I should have gone with more of a traditional shutter speed for my panning shots, but overall these more experimental shots are something I’m quite happy with.
This article is respectively all over the place, but that’s okay. Final Bout is a flurry of emotion, which drums up all kinds of feelings, the majority of which are good. I really can’t say enough good things about the event itself, but perhaps my most important takeaway from the weekend isn’t any of the cool cars I saw, my less than ideal approach to shooting the event, what have you; perhaps it was the fact that I got to meet up with and hangout with my friends I rarely get to see from all over the country and we got to enjoy something we all greatly enjoy, the simple pleasure of seeing a well done car going sideways at the very edge of grip in the middle of nowhere.
PART II.
THE CARS
Like I said prior, I didn’t get as many detail shots of individual cars as I have at past events. That being said there are a handful of cars I gave a considerable amount of attention to both on and off the track. A lot of these cars I wasn’t able to talk to the owners to gather more details on them and as I’m writing this several months past the event my memory of what I did see is foggy at best. I trust with your keen eyes that you’ll be able to discern the things you like one way or another about the machines I’ve captured.
If there was a main event at Final Bout, it was Kazuya Taguchi’s S13 powered by a Tomei GENESIS SR22G that sounded absolutely insane and was like no other SR I’ve ever heard. Of course, this had to be the most covered car at the event. I mean it’s not every day that a well known international pro-driver brings his personal machine to tool around at the track.
I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for IS300s, even with their odd angles and quirks there’s just something appealing about the unassuming mid-size sedan that looks just at home sideways on the track as it does in the middle of mid 20000s luxury suburbia. I will say the vast majority of them, especially when it comes to drifting are a mess, but that’s not the case with Danner’s golden IS300. An aggressive kit, chrome minervas, and ganador aero mirrors shake off that unassuming look and put it squarely into the category of top-shelf aesthetically pleasing drift cars.
Continuing the trend of IS300 love, lets take a look at AJ Gillett’s beautiful machine. I don’t know just how long this thing has been around but I know I’ve seen it for several years at this in various parts of the country and it never fails to impress. Its one of a handful of cars for me that is evocative of Final Bout. To be this expertly driven for this long and look this good is an accomplishment in it’s own right. What more can I really say besides I just love this fucking thing?
Unbeknownst to me at the time, but some of my favorite cars from that event all happened to be Toyota products; I swear I’m not a Toyota guy by any means. I remember when I first saw this thing online, it was a meeting of my two favorite things. Japanese cars and Houston slab culture. I grew up listening to southern rappers, Slim Thug included, which was my entry into slab culture and I’ve always thought how cool it would be to combine certain elements from it into what I’m more into. Low and behold a man of a similar mindset would arise from the ether of Instagram and complete an idea I’ve never said out loud. Not only does Zach have the slab inspired neon light trunk setup, he drifts the absolute piss out of it. It’s nutty to think that as he wildly careens around the track throwing the rear end every which way, inside that trunk is a delicate light setup that serves no greater purpose than to just style on everyone else. I love it.
Okay, well I might actually be a bit of a Toyota guy. Eric’s GS wasn’t something prior to this event I paid much attention to. In it’s previous iteration, it sported a two tone look and was rather non-descript outside of that, well for drift cars at least. Don’t get me wrong it was a great machine and certainly one I have pictures of floating around on my hard drives, but it wasn’t as eye-catching as it’s current iteration. I remember a couple of days before Final Bout seeing his GS posted all over online and I was so stoked to see it in person. The deep red, winged sedan was a far cry from it’s former self and one I was very happy to get to document in the way I did. Now I didn’t ask Eric to park his GS where it was, I was actually heading back into the pits, but I saw the opportunity and I jumped.
While I have shown my hand as a bit of a Toyota guy, the JZX chassis is one I’m not too particularly fond of. The proportions are weird and it’s just so physically large I don’t usually find myself liking them. Michael’s deep forest green Mark II is one of the few exceptions that piqued my interest. I feel like I commonly see the JZX chassis skyjacked with crazy angle kits and body damage that says “My best friend is a concrete barrier.” Michael’s JZX is vehemently not that, no crazy high ride height or excessive kit to make it appear more aggressive and lower than it truly is, just a big body sedan that can swing with the best of them.
Moving on from Toyota, we return to your regularly scheduled drift-ready s-chassis. Julio’s Silvia popped up on my Instagram feed sometime last year posed alongside a collector’s edition Lego Star Destroyer that was sat upon it’s hood, instant follow. I would not say I’m very in the know of what’s going on online so I was quite unaware of who all would be attending. Needless to say I massively surprised to see it in person at Final Bout. I’m a sucker for small wheels on S13s and Julio’s rides the line of somewhere between that small-wheeled early s-chassis styling that and a more modern look. The doily seat covers and the PS1 low polygon angular steering wheel are just some of the odd ends of this car that really stuck out to me, as they’re both things that would be more at home in other automotive subcultures, but somehow Julio just makes it work. Some of the most exciting driving from that weekend came from the man himself as he put this machine where ever he wanted on the track. Impressed doesn’t even begin to describe it.
On the other end of the spectrum of s-chassis is Hert’s S13 hatch. I am not an extremely online individual, at least when it comes to the automotive world, so I can’t say I am constantly paying attention to the hoonigan crew or any of their adjacent groups. With a Honda K-series engine at it’s heart I was overjoyed to see this, if for no other reason than my diehard appreciation of Honda. I’ve got several friends that have been working over the past few years to make it a little easier to put perhaps one of Honda’s best powerplants into s-chassis and other popular RWD vehicles. Once again, I haven’t given it much attention, not because it is of no interest to me, but because if I know that it’s possible and how much it costs I’m much more likely to be completely fucking stupid with my money. So, you can imagine how overjoyed I was to see a Honda powered s-chassis for the first time in person, especially when it was backed up with some impressive driving and stunning fabrication work. After watching Hert drive this thing to it’s limit all weekend it’s only become harder to be willfully ignorant of the costs of such a thing, but man did I get so much joy out of seeing it.
Over the course of the weekend, I think that the Essence Garage R32 was the first car to catch my eye. I know I have a thing for red cars, and even more so red Nissans, but come on man, how could you not? For someone who got into the Japanese car scene right before these became import legal, they’re still one of the more eye-catching imports around. It’s missing the shouldered look of it’s big brother GT-R variant, but the slimmed down look that the sedan pulls off is much more at home in a field of s-chassis and other common drifting platforms. Top it off with it’s matching red interior and the chromed Garson Ryugis and you’ve got yourself one attention grabbing machine that looks even more impressive on track.
Car Modify Wonder. The antithesis to my tastes, at least at the moment. That’s not to say I dislike them, the opposite is true actually. I love CMW aero and I often fantasize about cutting up my pristine S14 just to throw on every bit of wild aero they offer that I’m sure won’t age as well as so many think, myself included. I’m just saying usually I wouldn’t fall in love with a kit that throws so many hard, shark-like angles onto a rather soft looking car. At the heart of this kouki sits a big old stinking V8 that just screams with impunity, which again is something at it’s core I vehemently disagree with. THAT BEING SAID, you put all these components together, the kouki front end that’s at odds with the original design of the car, an excessively angular kit, and the engine that’s the most American thing to exist since early onset diabetes, and you have something I just can’t hate. I mean if you’re going to cram a V8 into an s-chassis you might as well go full bore with it, anything else is heresy of the highest order and deserving of punishment that parallels the Arbiter’s in Halo 2. Just like Halo 2 this thing kicks ass, I mean I didn’t capture a photo of this car, or it’s nearly identical twin sitting just behind it, where it wasn’t billowing smoke from the rear like it came screaming out of a Rob Zombie song. Blake if you’re reading this, you rule man, this is top shelf stuff.
Outside of just looking damn good and sitting atop a set of my dream wheels, if there was one other reason to specially shout Chris’s car out it’s because of the Ricky Bobby-esque placement of the hatchet man logo. I had a lot of laughs with Chris about it. Typical jugallo stereotypes were thrown around and he admitted it was all a bit, including his equally as ridiculous outfit for the occasion. It’s not often I laugh that hard at events like these, so I felt inclined to single this one out, because not only do I respect the dedication to the bit, the car speaks for itself and the man could throw down hard enough that I’m sure that if the boys at ICP could understand what drifting was, they’d be his biggest supporters, ironically or not.
To wrap this whole big thing up, I give you my pseudo-hometown heroes, Garage Moon Power. Ever since I’ve attended drift events I’ve come to know the people that make up this group and they’re all fantastic. They posses a certain kind of knowledge about drifting and their particular chassis that only comes from a place of passion. They first showed up at USAIR for Final Bout 3, where they took the championship and ever since you can expect them to be there in one way or another. This particular set of cars I hadn’t seen in years and boy was I excited to see them. I mean I legitimately was fumbling my words when I talked to them that day because of how excited I was to see them. To my knowledge none of these cars had been out in years. The genius that is Phil had been working his mad science on his R34, Sandra’s S13 had been off my radar for so long I forgot she had it, and Michael’s S12…. well it’s an S12 and from what I recall the limiting nature of that chassis has been a constant struggle for him, but damn if he didn’t push through it to get it there. To see all three of them at the same event together was astonishing. I could not be any happier for a group of people to get out there and do something they enjoy, like I am for the fine folks at Garage Moon Power.
So, that’s it. My long winded rambling about Final Bout has come to a close, but it’s not exactly over yet. I’ve still got just under 300 photos from the Moccoman’s exhibition at Horse Thief Mile and just below this block is nearly 500 photos of everything I captured from the event. Due to limiting factors of the website I had to split both galleries up, so make sure to click through and view them both! Thanks for reading!
