There are Drift Kings and Then There are Offset Kings [GALLERY]

April 15, 2014
Story By
Justin Pagtalunan

Long Beach, California. The streets are blocked and the pizza boys have gone home. It’s finally time to see the top Formula D qualifying drivers go head-to-head in round one of this early season, each driver not afraid to push the envelope and compete for the crown at the end of the season. And with the drift season starting, the car show season has officially gotten started here in Southern California as well. Offset Kings Car Show by Fatlace was held in collaboration with Formula D at the lot by turn 2.

The show within the show was a great venue for people to check out between breaks. Fatlace never disappoints in impressing the spectators whenever they host an event. Offset Kings had a clean layout of cars, easy for spectators (and especially photographers) to walk the venue without missing a single car. Not like you would ever miss it, but the Fatlace booth up in front featured a clean and simple Volkswagen Bus. Nothing bright and flashy, but extremely low and what, what’s that inside?

A shaved ice machine! Providing refreshing cones for passerby’s finding a way to keep cool on this warm spring day.

With your shaved ice in one hand and maybe a camera in the other, you’re now ready to journey through the rest of the palace of kings. If the minty fresh paint job on Todd Nakanishi’s first generation Scion xB doesn’t pull your eyes in first, you will be sucked in after admiring all the little attentions to detail.

Some people might not even own a leather belt for their pants, yet Todd outfits his xB with leather straps for the bumper as well as the spare tire on the roof rack.

The proper interior fit for a king. Being an offset king is about having a feel on how to achieve the perfect stance on your vehicle. Just as how drift kings score the most points by getting as close to the wall as a possible, true offset kings gain respect by how close they can get the lip of the wheel to the fender. There is a lot of fine tuning involved; sizing the perfect wheel width, tire stretch, and offset off course. And then deciding what type of suspension you will pull the look off with, static or air. Riley Tate’s Nissan 350z on teal Work VS-XX is about as low as it can get for a king, especially one that’s “NT ONAIR”!

There will always be people trying to come in and take the crown, but Riley isn’t scared. Come get it!

Watching Formula Drift you can see that each king as their own weapon of choice on the battle field; from imports, to euros, to American muscle. The same goes for the offset game. Here’s one little euro with a giant sized aggression, Justin Saiki’s Fiat Abarth 500; not your average city car.

The fitment on the Avant Garde M240 is perfect and the Arqray X Fiftygo Fifty exhaust and carbon fiber rear diffuser really add a sting to this scorpion.

Such a clean color combo on the wheels. I’ve always been a sucker for Porsche’s, so immediately I was drawn to this GT3 build by the currently hot trending LTMW. You don’t have to do much to make a Porsche look good, but they were able to add the subtle hints here and there to make this exotic a show stopper.

LTMW has really made a name for it recently by bringing exciting stanced exotic cars for spectators to “ooh and awe” over.

Style and comfort all in one package, this Toyota Sienna perfect for offset royalty. Truly one of a kind at the lot on this day, this swagger wagon sits on Work Equips and Airrex Air Suspension.

Tuck, poke, stretch, scrub, flush, static, stance, fitment, lowered, sacked, slammed, dumped, decked, railed, dropped, bagged, etc. If it fits, it sits. There are over 50 Formula D Drivers this year, but only the top 32 can qualify for the tandem battles on the second day, so what’s to do for the rest of them? Why not just hang out with the people at Offset Kings? That’s what a few of them did and spectators got a great opportunity to check out some of these drift king’s beasts up close. Will Parsons’ NonStopTuning AE86 was proudly chilling by the track.

“Long hair, don’t care” is a phrase the big fella goes by and I feel it goes perfectly with his AE86 running a Honda F20C engine. Definitely an odd pairing but you know what; he’s a professional driver now and ready to compete no matter what people think.

Alec Hohnadell is one of this year's rookies at Formula D running with Enjuku Racing. Here he is chatting it up with this crew as spectators pass by him and the Nissan S14 they call the Purple Monster.

While he did make it into the top 32, he unfortunately was eliminated in his first tandem battle.

But the kid’s got his head up; so expect to see him ready to go again in round 2 and we will see you all again at the next show! Check out more in the gallery below!

There are Drift Kings and Then There are Offset Kings [GALLERY]

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