(engine thundering)
- Let's say you want to build a car to go compete
in any type of racing series,
road, racing, drag racing, formula drift even.
You can't just go build the craziest thing you can manage.
You've got to follow these things called rules.
So what happens when a professional race team
ditches that rule book and makes the most insane,
most powerful drift car to ever lay down some rubber?
Well, this happens.
(tires screeching and engine thundering)
Our buddy and pro drifter
Chris Forsberg built a drift car so sick
it's not even allowed in Formula D.
And today we're not only going to show you
this car for the first time,
we're going to show you how it came to be
and why breaking the rules was necessary for its creation.
The Alta Maniac is its name
and producing streaks in your underpants is it's game.
Let's go.
When Chris and his team put this car together
they started with a clean sheet of paper.
They wanted to do a few more untraditional things starting
with its chassis.
Now it's sporting a full tube chassis,
the same type in trophy trucks, monster trucks
and it gives this four-seater Altima
the same type of rigidity and stiffness.
- And so this was kind of an idea that we've had
for years, building a tube chassis car.
And so with drift cars getting faster, more powerful,
bigger, you know, drive trains, you know,
we're starting to like see
and feel the twist of the chassis.
And this is the best way to strengthen that.
- On a normal car, the chassis is made out of stamped
out sheet metal, likely steel or aluminum, and this is cheap
and easy to manufacture, but it's not built
with the strength to survive a race weekend,
even though the sheet metal
and the tube chassis can be the same material,
a tube chassis is significantly stronger.
And this comes from the physical shape
of the metal being used.
When the direction
of force is controlled for a defined area of square tubing
when compared to its round brother, it's stronger.
But when the direction
of force is unknown, round tubing is what you want.
When you crash a race car for example,
the direction of force
in a lot of circumstances will be unknown.
Round tubing also has one continuous surface with no edges.
And because of this,
any pressure caused by a force is evenly distributed.
This reduces the chance
for unwanted bins or breaks.
Round tubing, it's got no weak points
from corners since there are no corners.
So this Alta Maniac has a full tube chassis.
There's no structural sheet metal at all.
It's all made of tube metal that is laser cut
perfectly to size.
When Chris got the donor car,
he had the entire car 3D-scanned, with a 3D laser scanner,
the scanner uses software to drive the laser probe
above the surface of the car.
And while the laser is scanning, camera sensors
continuously record the changing distance
and shape of the laser line in three dimensions
as it moves along the surface,
the shape of the object being scanned
appears as millions of points called a point cloud.
And this process is fast and gathers up to 750,000 points
per second, with a lot of precision,
up to five, 10 thousands of an inch.
That 3D scan then allows Chris and his team
to 3D design the tube chassis with amazing tolerances.
- You know, this whole thing, every plate, every piece,
every tube came on a pallet,
just a single piece, and they're all labeled.
They all have a little laser etching on them,
a little part number.
And so we had to go through the actual CAD drawing
select each tube, pull them out of the pile,
lay them on the ground and get it all kind of situated
and slowly build the same from the ground up.
This was the first time we've ever done this.
And we took the stock chassis to this in 10 days.
- A Formula D chassis can have 2,000 hours of work into it.
Chris' 370Z for example took the team over a month.
Whereas this new chassis took 10 days to build.
When they go to replicate it,
it could be even quicker,
so quick that they could show up to the race event
with three spare chassis if they wanted to.
This is how current spec racing works
for other racing series.
Now, none of this would mean anything
if the car didn't have a powerful engine
for this sideway sedan, Fords Works team, they dropped in
the best Nissan could offer.
The Alta Maniac is powered by the VR-38 engine straight out
of the Nissan GTR, except it's got a lot more power.
2,000 horsepower to be exact, tons of billet aluminum
parts went into this engine, billet crank, billet rods,
billet main caps, billet girdles and a dry sump oil system.
The engine has been stroked to increase its capacity
to four liters, add in 35 pounds of boost.
And it makes a total of 2,000 horsepower.
And that's on the stock block.
Did you spec the motor out when you had them build it
or did you guys work together or what was the process,
was it just like, hey, I want to hit 2000 horsepower,
do what you got to do?
- Pretty much, yeah.
T1 is, I would say the leaders
in GTR VR-38 engine builds right now.
They have the world's fastest GTR.
They constantly win all the classes
at like the Texas mile and everything else.
And you know,
so it's nice to see a team that has just fully
proven high horsepower VR setups getting
into the drift space.
- So this team spent tens of thousands
of dollars building a car that's stiffer, safer
and more powerful than any Formula D car ever built,
but they can't compete with it.
Why not?
This is the formula drift rule book, it's 40 pages
of what you can and can't do to your car
in order for it to be legal for competition.
Rules about how you can't change the OEM floor pan
or the factory strut tower pickups, or cut the firewall.
Now these rules are
in place for two main reasons, safety and costs.
And it's pretty much the same with any motor sport.
- Yeah.
With formula drift, we are not allowed to do any of this.
And so, especially the factory firewall,
you're not allowed to remove,
you can open up the transmission
tunnel a little bit to fit a different transmission
and you can skate the motor back a little bit
because of that.
But you cannot just cut the vertical plane
of the firewall.
The big thing is like, like I was saying, once again,
that's so that it keeps people in check
on what they do and don't do what their chassis.
- The reason most of these kinds
of changes can't be made is for safety.
So how is Forsberg Altima safer than an FD car?
Well, for one thing,
the rule book is designed to the lowest common denominator.
The worst equipped team in any series
has to be able to build something
that meets safety standards.
Even if the bigger teams can make something better
in a different way, firewalls, they have to stay
intact because of the amount of work it takes
to build a custom firewall and prove that it works.
It takes skill and money to do it right.
And telling teams they can't change the firewall ensures
at least a moderate level of safety
while also stopping the team from spending more money.
And it also evens out the playing field a bit.
This build clearly is head and shoulders
better than any other car.
So if it can't compete, why build it?
- It's one of those things like, you know
drifting is awesome, right?
And it's like talking to people about it is one thing,
seeing it in person is another,
going for a ride is the top, right?
And so I wanted to build something
that we could give more rides in because you know,
one person at a time is very difficult.
It's hard on the car.
It's a lot of, you know,
materials and resources used to go for a ride.
And so I was like, okay,
if we can, you know, triple that, why not?
And since, you know, events like Grid Life
and these other ride along events are really taking off.
It's like, well, there's more and more effort
and energy going towards these party events
as we call them outside of the competition.
So, you know, we of course have our, you know,
Nissan 370Z, which is our pro drift race
car that we use for Formula Drift.
But I was like, well, let's build the best
four-seater party car that we possibly can.
- Forsberg has built this Nissan for you.
It's the Altima of the People!
This Alta Maniac is built to give three times
as many people the experience of riding along
with a pro drifter, because it's not competing.
There's no cutting corners for safety.
And to haul around four people, it's got to have
way more horsepower than a standard formula drift car.
And the best thing about a drift taxi like this
you'll actually get to experience more G-forces
than even the pro drifters do.
As the car drifts,
the entire chassis pivots around the center point
between the front two wheels, the front wheels have the grip
while the back wheels let go and slide.
If you're in the driver's seat,
you're only about 18 inches away from that center point.
As the car changes direction, you would experience
the acceleration of the chassis plus acceleration
of your position relative to the chassis.
Acceleration is a vector, meaning it needs a direction
and a magnitude.
So as you're drifting, you're actually accelerating.
But if you're in the back of the car, you're now six foot
from the pivot point, you're traveling a longer distance
every corner in the same amount of time,
experiencing more G-forces in the back,
which is where I got to ride in this puppster.
(tires screeching and engine thundering)
(upbeat music)
We want to thank Chris Forsberg and his team
for letting us follow this build through its inception.
Obviously Chris gave me a spin
in his Alta Maniac and it was wild.
So thanks for allowing me to be a part of this.
- I mean, obviously this has been
like the most extensive build we've ever done.
It's been a very long time.
It's cost a lot of money and there's a lot of theory in it.
You know, that is yes, been proven on computer,
but just, you know
the idea of like, you know, what can we do?
And, you know, it just takes a massive amount of support
not even just from the guys here in the shop,
putting the car together.
But of course from, you know, like babbling
to trust in me to have, you know,
a good idea come to life, you know,
because this has never been done before.
So, you know, you want to make sure
that you can pull through
when people support you and so,
hats off to them for being onboard
with this project from day one.
- If you want to ride in this car for yourself,
click the link in the description below.
It'll show you where this car is going to be at,
a couple events around the country over the following year.
Thank you guys so much for watching this episode of B2B.
Follow us on Instagram here at Donut,
@donutmedia.
Follow me @jeremiahburton,
till next week!
Bye for now.