touge history
this was originally a paper i wrote for english IV, but i figured it was good enough to go on a website (which isn't really saying much). i noticed that there really wasn't much of a review on what touge racing was, and i wanted to peice it all together in one place. this might be a little long, but anyone that is interested in it should look through it. be aware, because of the lack of good information on the subject, i cannot vouch for the quality of this info, but when i find more information, i'll be sure to amend it.
touge is nipponese for "mountain" or, more correctly in this context, "mountain pass". touge racing is a motorsport that involves racing through mountain passes at high speeds. it started in the late seventies in nippon after nipponese automobile manufacturers began producing cars that could roughly be considered sporty. earlier that decade toyota began producing the celica, mazda began their rx series, and datsun began making the z, now younger people were getting ahold of these cars used and began racing them.
touge racing really did not begin to hit the mainstream until the mid-nineties, but to really see why one would have to look back to the entire nipponese auto history.
nipponese car manufacturers have always produced smaller cars with smaller engines. nippon is a smaller country with fewer roads. having a large v8 would be pointless (at least slightly more pointless than a v8 in a car to begin with). they used smaller engines because the nipponese culture has always been one of practicality and necessity. rather than going with larger displacement engines (as the american manufactures did) they instead perfected the four cylinder to its entirety. in the eighties it was not uncommon for a nipponese engine to push 100hp per liter. Mazda's rx line performed even better. they had the ability to push close to 150hp per liter. in the mid eighties nipponese car manufacturers began to sponser racers in the wrc (truthfully they had before, but they had never really hit it very hard). toyota entered the wrc in 1986 (they had been in it before, but they had used modified stock cars, rather than creating a car specifically for the wrc) with the celica gt4, becoming the first nipponese manufacturer to win the wrc. it won the next two years in a row.
that same year keiichi tsuchiya openned the world to the art of drifting during a stock car race. he was bumped by another driver and instead of admitting defeat he took a whole lap completely sideways. when asked by reports what he was doing he responded with one word, "duri". duri is nipponese for drifting, which is a technique used by touge drivers to take turns at high speeds. duri is the art of losing traction while maintaining control. it is truthfully the a street conversion of common rally techniques.
a short rewind, in 1984 toyota released what could be one of the most popular car used in touge / drifting. the ae-86 corolla gts sprinter apex trueno (?) (yes that is the whole freakin' title). it is more commonly known as the eight-six trueno, or just the eight-six. it was a smaller, lighter four cylinder rear wheel drive car. it shared many of its parts with celicas of the same year, meaning that it had a wonderful suspension, and a rally transmission. it really did not come into the light until a few years later, when it became part of the "used" car market, making it available to a younger crowd.
here is a picture of an panda ae86 trueno
and here is a panda levin (same car, no pop-up headlights). They are called panda because they are black and white. keiichi tsuchiya drove a panda trueno, and in initial-d tak fujiwara also drives a panda trueno (more on this later). coincidence?
in the mid nineties touge and drifting exploded, beginning in nippon and spreading across the world like consumer electronics. nipponese highschoolers found available to them a whole sleugh of 1980s rally and sport cars. the touge /drift scene overflowed with truenos, rx7s, Silvias, 180SXs, and other semi-cheap rear-wheel drive cars.
below is a mark ii mazda rx7
what most people don't know is that the rx7 and the toyota supra share a chassis. this is most apparent when viewed from the side. the rx7 has a shorter trunk and nose, but chassis wise, they have always been the same car (the older rx* were celicas, when the supra came out the rx7 was born).
here's a profile of a mark ii rx7
here's a profile of a mark iii supra (same year). while mazdas were amazing drift cars, supras were not as amazing; mainly because they were larger (had longer nose and tail) and heavier. mazda's rotary engine weighed less than 100 pounds. supras had 3.0 l strait sixes. this made it more nose heavy. yes, supras can be drifted, but they are harder to drift in than the rx7.
here is a nissan silvia s13. this is considered by some to be the best car for drifting.
and here is a nissan 180sx. this has to be my fav drifting car.
in 1997 the touge / drifting community was peeled like an orange and thrown into the bustling crowd that is the public with the release of a manga called initial-d. almost immediately an anime followed. the anime sported some of the first uses of computer animation in a televesion anime. this was used during race scenes where the cg allowed races to run at nearly sixty frames a second.
initial-d is about a highschool senior that has been delivering tofu on mt. Akina for his father in an ae-86 trueno. he passes a famous touge racer named ry takahashi while the latter was doing a practice run in his rx7.
initial-d sparked the touge / drifting community, making it a multi-million dollar industry. the sway if the community was such that nipponese car manufacturers began producing cars with popular drift modifications already done (a prime example of such being the sil-eighty, which was the front clip of a silvia-k with the back clip of an sx180). a sponsored drift-team formed called d1.
d1 brought the drift scene to america at the same time that english translations were being made of initial-d. drifting became a common thing on roads in California and Hawaii. drifting also began to appear in video games like Need for Speed. unfortunaly in all this hype about drifting, touge failed to be mentioned. drifting lost its roots, and now has become a sport to be performed in parking lots and side streets; truely a pervesion of the art and beauty of touge racing.
so what is drifting?
drifting is the art of losing traction while maintaining control. it requires a lighter, rear wheel drive car. a drift can be initiated in many ways, but the result is always the same: loss of rear wheel traction (or in some cases, loss of traction altogether). the car slides so that it is facing the inside of a turn. the driver then plays their controls to keep the slide. in this way a turn can be taken at high speeds. at the exit of the turn the car is turned back towards the direction of travel, and traction is regained. "chaining" a drift is the art of going from one turn to another without regaining traction. this is usually done by over-countersteering to change the direction of the drift and then taking the next turn.
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