EXPERIENCE THE MAD
MAD MIKE’S DOOR-BANGING TAXI
How often have you experienced something crazy, either behind the wheel or in the passenger seat, but when you share it with your best bros they just haven’t got it? Wouldn’t it be cool if you could all suit up, strap on skid lids, and have one of the world’s most-regarded drifters bang the lock stops for ya in his backyard playground of Hampton Downs, so, instead of having to try to explain how wild that ride was, you could simply throw up all manner of approving hand signals in the air mid corner as you all grin ridiculously from ear to ear? Well that, my friend, is now the reality. It is also proof that even someone such as ‘Mad Mike’ Whiddett, who has reached the top of his chosen profession — drifting — has the drive not to lose sight of why he got into drifting in the first place and, further, to share that infectious feeling he first got with as many willing participants as possible.
“It might sound crazy to some, but, at my level, with the investment in time and money required, and the frustration of it being a judged sport, it’s really easy to lose the fun side of drifting. So it’s good to be able to balance out my year with fun projects like this,” Mike explains.
The idea to build a drift taxi had been in the works for some time but gained serious momentum only two months out from last year’s Summer Bash. Inspired by the few built in Japan, it would be a fourdoor sedan, but, unlike the Japanese ones, it had to have all the safety of a traditional race car.
“I’m a ’70s-to-’80s-era dude; that’s my favourite era of cars. It had to be a Mazda, of course, and it had to have a rotary transplant, so there were really only two chassis it could be: the early ’90s Sentias or late ’80s Luces. We found a few really mint Sentias, but, after measuring them up, we realized that it would have been too hard to make the roll cage work with the rear main hoop. The main thing always was that we wanted the passengers in the back to feel safe, and me to know they were safe so that I could push hard. The last thing I wanted was to have to hold back,” he says of the plan.
This car popped up already running a 13B turbo, and, being an ’87, it’s Mike’s favourite model, as it’s the only one with sunken-in bumpers. With no time to waste before Summer Bash, it was stripped back and the fun began. Unlike other drift car builds in the Mad Lab, restraint would be exercised on the Luce when it came to the power plant. Mike didn’t need insane horsepower figures; they just needed to achieve around 373kW and keep it extremely reliable. All of Mike’s race programme partners jumped on board to help out — no doubt in anticipation of being offered a ride or two in the back seat.
However, as Mike was to find out, the build would not be as simple as first thought. Performance parts for an ’80s Luce just don’t exist and, despite early thoughts of FC RX-7 parts bolting in, everything had to be either custom made or FC RX-7 components modified, as was the case with the BC Racing coilovers. Achieving additional steering lock was high on the priority list. Again, there was nothing available off the shelf, so Adam from C’s Garage cut and welded the knuckles, using an educated guess — which Mike says he nailed, as it feels pretty damn spot on.
A complete JC Cosmo 13B bridgeport was put together using Mazda components. With a Garrett GTX40 bolted to the side, it produces 410kW on E85 — enough to smash a set of tyres four-up. Who says little rotaries don’t produce enough torque?