(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.
