Calaveras County, California - You’re not a real drifter, they say, until you’ve made a touge video.
Touge is the art of tyre-slaying on a public road, rather than an open space such as a racetrack, car park or dockyard. Think of the final scene in Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. That’s touge - and that, in fact, is where professional drifting got its start, back in the day, on the twisty mountain passes of the Japanese Alps.
To introduce us to real-life touge, once described as parcour for cars, we have US FormulaD pro driver Matt Field, and his Nissan 240SX - a Japanese car with an American heart - in this case a seven-litre, supercharged, GM LSX V8 crate engine rated for a cool 780kW at 7500rpm.
The scene is a reservoir road in Northern California, which we are assured was closed for the video shoot. The action is fast, furious and funny, and as Matt Field himself says, there’s no music and no free rides.
Crank up the amp and hold on tight for five and a half minutes of howling V8 soundtrack and amazing sideways action.