If you’re an avid Formula Drift fan and followed along for years you may have your share of favorite memories. However, can you remember some of the most unique FD builds to take the grid? Here are our top 8 picks for most unique Formula Drift Cars! Let us know if you think we missed any or what your favorite ones are!
8. James Bondurant’s Factory Five Shelby Replica
James Bondurant (son of Bob Bondurant) brought a few unique cars out to Formula Drift over his career span. The most unique was a Factory Five Roadster, which is a mock chassis of the famous 427 Shelby Cobra. He never qualified in it
7. Mike Peter’s Automatic Chevrolet El Camino
Mike Peters drove a 3 speed automatic Chevrolet El Camino around Formula Drift for quite some time! The automatic transmission is now illegal in Formula Drift so this is another unique feature to this odd drift car that stands out. You could also classify it as the only “truck” to run in Formula Drift if you wanted too. The really cool thing about this build is that is was super budget and Mike Peters was decently competitive with it.
6. Travis Reeder’s Electric EL1 Chevrolet Camaro
Travis Reeder with Napoleon Motorsports unveiled a full electric Chevrolet Camaro for the 2019 Formula Drift season. The car qualified at Road Atlanta putting this Chevy in the history books of Formula Drift. This Camaro runs Konig Ampliform wheels that are 20″ x 9.5″in the rear and 19″ x 8.5″ in the front wrapped in Nitto NT555G2 tires.
5. Team Falken’s 1969 Chevrolet Camaro
Team Falken really had their glory days of Formula Drift in the early years of the sport. The 1969 Chevy Camaro was a perfect example of the boys in teal and blue throwing anything on the track they thought could drift. Ryan Hampton was tasked with trying to wheel this old muscle car around Formula Drift. While the car never performed exceptionally well he did look up to the standard of the times in Formula Drift and man it looked good sideways.
4. James Robinson’s V6 Honda Element
James Robinson took his day job as an engineer at Honda and applied his skills to building a V6 swapped Honda Element for Formula Drift. This marks the only SUV or non-car chassis to compete in the sport to date. The new rulebook does not allow trucks or SUVs to compete in the series so this will stand as the lone qualifying SUV for a long time into the future.
3. Tanner Foust’s RWD Volkswagen Passat
Tanner Foust and his crew chief/builder Stephan Papadakis have brought some wild builds into Formula Drift over the years. I choose to dig into the Volkswagen Passat that was converted to RWD with a Chevrolet LS7 squeezed into the engine baby. The car was a very unique chassis and the first Volkswagen to compete in Formula Drift. While Tanner Foust is retired from Formula Drift he still brings the Passat out to events such as Gridlife where the car has been dubbed the “Drift Taxi.”
2. Blake Fuller’s RWD Acura Integra
In the early days of Formula Drift we had Blake Fuller of Braille Battery bring the first RWD converted FWD car to Formula Drift. He showed up with a DC2 Acura Integra that he converted to RWD and competed in FD. This car wouldn’t even be competitive in Pro Am these days but it was pretty cool and unique for its time. It was also the first Honda chassis to compete in Formula Drift with several to follow.
1.Federico Sceriffo’s Nitrous Powered Ferrari 599
This is the car you are likely the most familiar with on this list. The Ferrari 599 made a debut in the 2018 season piloted by Italian drifter Fedrico Sceriffo. The first version of the car was a twin-supercharge the 6.0-liter V12 for its debut season. It was later simplified to a simpler motor setup with nitrous to top it off for power. It’s not likely we will see another exotic car compete in Formula Drift in the next decade so this is truly a crazy and unique chassis to treasure.
