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Real Deal Street Car Killah
Exploring Maui’s Drifting Scene

by By Barukh Shalev

May 12, 2005

I had forgotten how severe burning rubber smells. The air was thick with it, wafting around the area like some death cloud. Slowly and sluggishly the poisonous haze seeped into the car, taking on a strange, bluish tint from the neon dashboard lights. My eyes watered and I could taste the sharp, acrid musk of suffering tires.



We weren’t going particularly fast, maybe 25 to 30 miles per hour when Shifty pulled the emergency brake and floored it. Time stopped. The engine roared like a wounded lion—a deafening, frightening, horrible sound. The wheels spun as if we were on an ice skating rink.



Then Shifty eased up on the brake.



Unleashed, the car rocketed forward, wheels still spinning up smoke. He violently yanked the wheel one way and the car headed straight for the wall.



I was certain I was going to die. I flashed back to all the times I had been in a car accident. I closed my eyes, waiting for the sounds of collision.



A moment later, the thunderous roar of the engine resumed. We didn’t hit the wall. There was more screeching and the car sounded angry. I couldn’t see in front of me because the path was blocked with the thick cloud of black smoke created by the squealing tires. Then, through the fog lights another wall emerged.



I thought about dying again.







Drifting is the art of driving a car sideways. It’s not easy, partly because automakers hire engineers to make cars do exactly the opposite. To do it right, a driver must successfully defy the laws of physics, seamlessly juggling speed, mass and momentum to surf the car around tight corners. Style, not speed, is the main factor.



Shifty—for this story, he’s just called Shifty—is short and stocky with classic



Hollywood good looks. He’s 35, an elder statesman in the world of drifting and his hair shows a touch of gray. He has a quick smile and an easy laugh but while drifting, his face changes, becoming distorted, almost cruel.



Once, while in the midst of a session I made a point to look at Shifty, look hard at his face and eyes. It was like the face of someone injecting heroin or in the throes of orgasm. It was distorted, tight with adrenaline. His bulging eyes darted rapidly, making infinite, crucial calculations on how much gas to give, how much break to apply.



Drifting is complicated. Several cars leave the central point and station themselves on the side of the road. A system of codes, blinking lights tell the drifters what they need to know: A car is coming; Wait a minute before going; Is that you? and so on.



Shifty said he’s never gotten a ticket. “If I get one ticket—shoots, brah, they take my safety sticker off and I can’t get one new one because all the modifications I made to my ride,” he said. “Make me take off my mufflah, exaust. It’d be one disastah!”



Shifty lives in a ramshackle house in Happy Valley. He’s got cars in his yard behind the



house, in front of the house and surrounding the house. There are about 25 in all, in various stages of dismemberment. Some are broken down, some have no doors or tires or engine. One sits regally on a tow truck. Using black spray-paint, someone has written “DRIFT SESSION” across its body.



Shifty’s car is a white Datsun 240SX two-door coupe that sits menacingly low to the ground. There’s a large silver spoiler on the trunk and the whole body is covered in stickers.



On the left door it said in silver and black letters “DRIFT GUNDAN” with Japanese script beneath it. On the right it said the same thing, only backwards.



“Gundan means like, da kine, you know, da boss,” Shifty told me. “The main man.”



Shifty could go to Japan and be a hit. He has the skills, charisma, motivation and spirit, but lacks the money. He lives with his wife’s parents.



“Most of my money goes right back into the car,” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I take care ah my kids. But you know, I keep my car up, too.”



His reputation is important to him. He has



never lost a street race, he tells anyone who will listen. Once he lost on a technicality, but challenged the guy again. “He didn’t wanna see dis,” he said.



“All the stuff is from Japan,” he told me, walking around the car. “I just bought the shell here, for one projec’ car. It came wit one two-point-four but I ordered one two-point-oh from Japan, yeah? In Japan, this is exactly what this car looks like.



“I bought dis one for five hundred dollahs, the previous owner he had big dreams to be one drift champion but life got in his way. He wanted to go to school, had one reality check, so I took it off his hands. I put at leas’ ten grand into it. Everyting is custom for da car: brakes, suspension, e-brake. All custom. No one can drive dis car. They can’t control it. I got the touch.”



I got inside. It had race car seats with harness seat belts. Various gauges and controls covered the control panel. It looked like an airplane cockpit. A Playstation was affixed to the dash.



The garage it sat in had car parts and beer bottles strewn about. An old dog sat in the corner, swatting flies with his tail. A wall of trophies sat collecting dust toward the back.



“Those are from da street races,” Shifty said. “Down at da track, yeah? Dis is da car that won ‘em.”



Another car sat in the garage—a sleek, tiny black Datsun.



“Dis is one street car,” Shifty said. “One ‘Real Deal Street Car Killah,’ that’s what I call ‘em. Real Deal Street Car Killah is street-legal and clocks at just under 160 miles an hour. King of da street. I spent years building dis one. Start ‘em from da groun’ up.”



The garage is Shifty’s business. Here is where he customizes cars, turns timid old Nissans and Datsuns into Real Deal Street Car Killah’s. His clientele are aspiring drifters and street racers. Shifty is an automotive Da Vinci and can quickly diagnose any problem on a car and fix it with the tools he has on hand.



I look around at the photos on the wall. I see pictures of his wife and two kids.



“I took my wife out on one drift session,” Shifty told me. “She came out with us and usually she just watches but she said she wants to hop in wit’ me. ‘Shoots, honey, get in,’ I said. She wanted me to take it easy, you know. I said, ‘Naw, honey, in one drift session you gotta hit ‘em up, go all out.’ She liked it. She was a little scared, but she liked it.



“I’ve taken about 40 or 50 guys out on drift sessions. About half of them were sold, hook, line and sinker. They went out and bought cars, too. I help ‘em with modifications and they become part of the drifting family. I am lucky, you know. Everything I need I got right here. I got simple needs—some food, cars, my wife, my kids. I got it all right here. Christmas everyday.”







Drifting is a Japanese thing, part of the complex and eccentric Japanese youth pop culture. It began in the countryside, in mountain towns like Nagano, Hakone and Rokkosan. Like other forms of car racing, it began as an illegal thrill.



The popularity of drifting began when the kids from the mountains came down to the city and showed off their outrageous vehicles and unorthodox style. Word spread and organizers began holding races and renting tracks to practice.



Eventually drifting as a sport gained legitimacy and became a multi-million dollar industry. Drifting has its own video games, cartoon series, fan clubs, a super league of drifters called D1 and even a yearly grand prix race that serves as drifting’s answer to the Indy 500.



On the West Coast and Oahu, drifting is huge. On Maui, the scene is still in its infancy. A drifting store at the Queen Ka’ahumanu Mall called Speedline Hawai’i closed for lack of business.



Tucked within the labyrinthine streets of Kahului sits another shop—1320 Performance, Maui’s premier import car garage. In contrast to Shifty’s house, the cars outside 1320 are clean,  with polished rides with tinted windows and rims. The 1320 Performance crowd goes to the glitzy parties. Hapa’s has nights for them. They are the young and beautiful of the import car scene.



“We make fast, clean, powerful cars,” said Matt Higa, who owns 1320 Performance. Higa is 25 and took over from the previous owner in 2001. “I am pretty much a self-taught mechanic. I mean, I had some training and stuff from the college, but mostly I learned from being here, experimenting with different things.”



Films like Fast and The Furious, as well as a general interest in fast cars has been beneficial for Higa. “The market is on the upswing, we have seen the scene grow rapidly,” he said while giving me a tour of the garage. “The older guys like Shifty are still in it and influencing the younger kids in high school. It is blowing up. I mean, we have outgrown our space here. We are using every nook and cranny we have and it’s still not enough.



“Even though, like on Oahu or on the Mainland, the scene is mostly Asian, in Maui you don’t have that. You have Asians and white folks, black people, Latinos, whoever. Out there each group has their own car culture. The whites have the muscle cars, the Latino and blacks have lowriders and the Asians the imports. Here it’s not like that. Because it’s so small, we all have to get along. There is no room for bullshit.”



As we walked though the garage, I saw all kinds of Honda Civics in various states of reconstruction.



“Civics are by far the most popular car in the import scene,” Higa said. “They are easy to manipulate, easy to get parts and easy to handle. We do, I’d say about three to five completes a month… ‘Complete’ is complete, from the ground up. From the tires, the exhaust, the engine, the mirrors, every single thing on the car is customized for the client.”



We came to one forlorn Civic, completely gutted. It’s shell was blotchy and painted in different colors.



“That’s a baby, a project car,” said Higa. “We plan on turning that… into that,” he said, gesturing to another, gleaming Civic on lifts. “This takes us around two months to do right. That and about 11 grand.”



I asked why someone would spend so much money.



“Simple,” he said. “Pride. Pride in having the fastest, cleanest car on the block.”



“Is it an addiction?”



“I was just gonna say exactly that,” he said. “It is an addiction, speed. Almost like a drug, you can’t get enough, there is never an end and you will always want to go faster. Once you have set the limit on your car the first thing you want to do is break that record.



“I mean, it’s rare, shit, it never happens that someone is a drifter or a racer and he sells his car and buys a Saturn. There is always this, linear progression. You always want to take it to the next level. But think about it this way. People spend their money on dumber shit: plastic surgery, a horse, I don’t know.



“I will say that no one in the scene is fucked up on drugs. I mean, I have seen them but not for very long. The nature of what we do selects them out. You have to be on point to do this. How are you gonna drift when you stay jag? We may have our drug but at least it’s right here,” he added, patting the car.







My first drifting experience took less than a minute but felt like hours. Different people have different reactions after their first experience. Some want out of the car, get sick and vomit. Others, like me, laughed uncontrollably and said “That’s so crazy, that is so fucking crazy!” over and over.



When it was over, I got out of the car to watch the rest of the pack. Our group, which grew by the hour, was situated on a high point near a cane field. There were about 40 or 50 people, of which only 10 were actually drifting.



The rest came for the party, to talk to girls and look at the fancy cars. I watched a trio of morbidly obese locals calling themselves the Fat Fucker Crew torture a centipede.



From my vantage point the whole scene became theater. There was no other traffic except for the drifters and the screeching echoes bouncing off the nearby mountains.



I plugged my ears and realized that without any sound, it looked synchronized and beautiful, as though the cars were performing some kind of vehicular ballet. I lost myself in a silent dreamlike trance until someone nudged me.



Police cars were headed our way. It was time to run. Everyone scattered, jumping in cars, heading for the hills, peeling out. It was as I ran that I first noticed that Shifty’s car only had one headlight. MTW