Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction / Initial D Fan Fiction ❯ Initial D: Anything Goes Drift Racing ❯ Stage 3: Chapter 3: The New Cars Revealed. ( Chapter 22 )

Initial D: Mt Furinken. Anything Goes Drift Racing.

 

Stage 3: Chapter 3: The New Cars Revealed.

 

Edy flashed Ranma a broad smile as he and Akane walked through the door into Kuno's large garage come workshop.

 

“I was beginning to think you weren't coming.” Edy laughed, leaning casually against a large blue tarpaulin that covered his lovingly modified new drift machine. Sakura pacing up and down fast enough to wear a grove in the floor looked up in delight.

 

“Ok, it's about time. I wanna roll.” Akane gave Sakura a wicked grin.

 

“Sorry, Ranma had to drop in on an old girlfriend.”

 

“I did not.” He protested. “We were checking up on an old friend is all.”

 

“Whatever.” Ranma rolled his eyes at Akane, while she wasn't looking.

 

“Ranma you cad, even when you have Akane you still chase other women.” Kuno said, jumping up from apparently nowhere.

 

“Don't start T. You know the only other lady in my life now is the one under that tarp.”

 

It still surprised Akane to hear Kuno and Ranma talk to each other like that. Although they still liked to goad each other their tones were always relaxed. In the time they spent together in the workshop covered in engine oil, grease and paint building their new cars, the two had become friends. Akane wasn't even sure they knew it but that tense formality was gone now, everything wasn't a challenge anymore, they were even on a first name basis though Ranma had managed to shorten Tatewaki to just T. He can be so lazy sometimes she thought.

 

The next moment Edy and Ranma gripped the edge of the large tarpaulins and pulled, the new cars revealed themselves like the sunrise on a clear summer morning. They stood back for a moment to admire the gleaming metal.

 

Edy's new ride was a Nissan 350Z, aggressively styled and packing a well tuned 500bhp the car was matt black with a single blue viper stripe down the left side of the car, the front wheels angled out to maximize grip during long drifts. Edy smiled, he had designed the setup with one key technique in mind, the inertia entry drift.

 

With inertia entry drift the drive begins the drift before he reaches the turn in point for the corner, so allowing high speed drifts into corners with very narrow entrances or sharp changes in angle during the corner. He had even modified the hand break with special break pads to increase it's lifespan and to prevent damage to the drive-tran.

 

Sakura had opted for something newer, a 2005 Mitsubishi eclipse she had picked up as an ex-demo car. Like her previous car it was small, light and nimble, not as fast as some cars but perfect for her technique. The car had only a small amount of external styling, a replaced front grill and new exhaust and a large intake for the turbo but the most notable aspect was the deep pearlescent purple paint job. It had taken almost a week to get the colour just right and she was proud of it.

 

Akane, like Sakura had gone for a car that suited her style. Except in Akane's case her style was balls out aggression, attacking each corner with more accelerator than control. So under Edy's advisement and Ranma's begging she had gone for something that nurtured her style. An Evo 8. With a 4WD, or AWD (all wheel drive) car drifting is different, a corner must be taken with full acceleration to balance the extra grip and altered dynamics compared to a rear wheel drive car. Although often more difficult to master than an RWD, it was much more suited to Akane and she was already rapidly catching Kuno's speed on the downhill.

 

Akane had chosen to keep styling to a minimum, though she had removed the rear spoiler and added front and rear splitters and painted the car a clear sky blue. The exhaust had also been replaced with something a bit more feral sounding to increase the airflow and improve performance.

 

Ranma stared at his car a moment longer as he admired its lines. The only thing more beautiful, he thought, was Akane. He had spent more time that the others when choosing his car and had weighed up a lot of options. So far he had driven an S15 and an NSX, both had been good but neither had really been his, they had been hand me downs. This time he would create his own. Something to truly match his style.

 

In the end Ranma had bought a Toyota Altezza RS200 (A Lexus IS300 outside Japan), and he'd done so for two important reasons. Although designed as an executive sports saloon, the model of RS he bought came as default with a limited slip dif and twin plate clutch and although these would be up-rated it meant he had more money to spend on the second point.

 

The problem Ranma had found with the RS200 was that most of the power was in the high end of the revs, this meant adding a turbo to the car was essentially useless, unless you had silly money to spend on a staggered twin turbo system that would fairly soon destroy the engine. So instead to boost the power the car needed something else, it needed a supercharger. A supercharger's forced power meant you didn't have to wait to get the revs up before the power kicked in, there was simply no lag, you put your foot down and the powers there. That meant more power and more control, or simply faster, longer drifts.

So there it sat, the sun red Altezza RS200 with a striking custom body kit Ranma, Edy and Kuno had built, de-locked, de-badged and sitting low on drift spec suspension Rtech split-rim alloys, hiding more than 600bhp under the bonnet.

 

They each slid behind the wheel of their respective cars and started the engines. A moment later the garage was filled with the earsplitting noise of exhausts and engines revving. Edy's 350Z, Sakura's Eclipse, Akane's Evo, Ranma's Altezza and Kuno's Impreza.

 

“You ready for the mountain?” Edy shouted over the noise.

 

“Is the mountain ready for us.” Yelled back Ranma with a whoop of excitement. Kuno reach out his window and held aloft a small black key fob. He pressed the single red button and one wall of the garage pivoted upwards, a moment later the cars emerged onto the street.

 

Ranma pulled a small radio from his pocket.

 

“It's a shame Neji can't be here. When is he back from America?”

 

“Another two weeks I think, his cousin should be better by then.” Sakura replied through her radio.

 

“Enough chat, let's go show the racers of Furinken mountain who's back.” Akane growled, she didn't need to use a radio for the others to hear her. Ranma felt a small drop of sweat form on his brow.

 

Then in a cloud of smoke and first gear tire squeal, the five cars were gone, heading for the mountain.