Smoking Skills

Paul ‘Smokey’ smith unleashes the UK’s first Toyota GT86 competition drift car...And it has a 700bhp 1.5JZ-GTE under the bonnet!

- Dan Goodyer

When Shuichi Shigeno created Initial D, the world’s greatest anime about drifting, he made sure the hero drove a Toyota Corolla AE86. His black and white ‘panda’ Trueno had popup headlights, as opposed to the Levin with the fixed rectangular headlights. It was the fastest car on the Touge because the AE86 was light, had a great chassis and, most importantly of all, Takumi could drift.

The old ‘hachi-roku’ (Japanese for ‘eight-six’) became synonymous with the art of driving sideways. From Keiichi Tsuchiya and Katsuhiro Ueo in Japan, to Chris Parry and Team Tekno in our neck of the woods. Even the first big-budget drift car builds seemed to feature AE86 Corollas, including Darren McNamara’s MCN Sport 13B turbo wide-arch screamer and Phil Morrison’s NASCAR-inspired LSX V8 Driftworks bruiser. So it makes sense that the AE86’s namesake and spiritual successor, the GT86, is overdue a serious representative in the UK drift scene.

Well, here it is...

It’s driven by Team Japspeed’s Paul ‘Smokey’ Smith, a name that should be familiar to anyone with an interest in UK drifting. The Team Japspeed driver shot to fame in 2012 when he became the SuperPro Champion of the British Drift Championship. Paul rose to the summit of the BDC behind the wheel of a Nissan S15 Silvia. Now this is his latest build. A Toyota GT86 that was 18 months in the making. Under the bonnet is a Toyota engine, but not the original two-litre naturally-aspirated ‘boxer’ 4UGSE. Oh no, that’s long gone…