LETTING LOOSE!

JK Tyre hosts India's first-ever competitive drifting event

- SAYANTAN DE

The list of affordable rear-wheel drive cars sold in post-independence India is a depressingly short one - the Hindustan Motors Ambassador, the Premier Padmini aka Fiat 1100D, the Premier 118NE which was a Fiat 124 with a Nissan engine and transmission, the Sipani Dolphin aka Reliant Kitten, and the Standard Herald.

None of these cars were remotely powerful in any way. So Indian enthusiasts have generally been deprived of the joys of drifting - the art of keeping a car sliding through corners with the front wheel pointing in the opposite direction - with white clouds of tyre smoke hanging in the aftermath.