After a five-year break from drifting, Tanner Foust
will return to the sport that jumpstarted his career, making his Formula D
homecoming behind the wheel of this 2015 Passat. With a competition debut this
weekend at the Long Beach Grand Prix, the four-door grocery-getter is
extensively modified and purpose-built for sideways combat, including a
conversion to RWD and a 900-horsepower V-8 transplant.
The two-time drift champion says he’s excited to be
back in the smoke, especially with a car as insane as this particular VW:
"One of the things I have always loved about drifting in the United States
is how inventive you can get with the car builds. You can put a high-horsepower
V-8 into a Volkswagen Passat to make something completely unique," Foust
says in a press release. "You don’t see that in another series in the
word."
As you can probably guess, the cabon is stripped and
fluff-free. There are fixed Recaro racing seats mounted low, complete with racing
harnesses attached to a custom 4130 chrome-moly rollcage. The wiring is GP
Motorsports mil-spec. The electronics are from MoTeC, while a Plex SDM-500 dash
display sits in front of the stock dials. For inputs, Foust enjoys Tilton
Engineering 600 series pedals, a Sparco steering wheel, and a giant, yellow,
custom 3D-printed handbrake. A variety of other components in the interior are
also custom 3D printed.
This is where things get really interesting. For
anyone who has heard a modern drift car driven in anger, it should be obvious
that the V-8 is the way to go. All that low-end muscle makes it much easier to
initiate power oversteer, plus a fat, linear torque curve means throttle
modulation is simple compared to what you’d get with a peaky, turbocharged engine.
Foust knows all of this firsthand, and has installed
a 450-cubic-inch V-8 under the VW’s hood. On its own, this monster motor pumps
out a solid 700 horsepower to the rear wheels. But in the world of drifting, if
some power is good, more is obviously better, which means an enormous bottle of
nitrous oxide was also fitted to give the V-8 a 200-shot in the pants,
rendering 900 horsepower at the drop of a foot.
