The Outsiders crew met and made friends with some great people during our time in Japan, and one of those people is Kazumasa Sekido. We met him at Kids Heart, which is where he works, and Phil even got to drive with him later on in the trip.
Sekido got introduced to drifting when he was 20 years old through a friend who at the time had an S15 face 180sx, (otherwise known as a ‘strawberry conversion’ because the words for 1 and 5 in Japanese are ichi and go. Put them together and you get ichigo, which means strawberry) this friend showed him the ropes with drifting and Sekido soon picked up his first drift car, a 180sx. While he was learning Sekido was introduced through his friend to none other than Masashi Yokoi from Mind Control, who helped teach him a little more.
Learning to drift isn’t easy for everyone, and you’re bound to have the odd accident. Unfortunatley for Sekido he had an accident at the dangerous YZ Circuit and the 180 was written off and had to be scrapped. Eventually he bought a cheap Spec-S S15 Silvia shell and slowly fixed it up and modified it with the help of his friends and Kids Heart into the fantastic car you see before you.
What I love about this car is the little cool and quite strange details it contains. Some of these became pretty apparent when the bonnet came up.
Inside sits an SR20DET as expected, but it’s not from an S15, it’s from an older S14 instead!
Another sweet little detail is the custom made Koyo Radiator. I noticed these on a few of the other cars I saw during the trip. I think it’s cool that a company like Koyorad can add a personal touch to their parts for customers.
Inside you’ll find a Bride ZIEG III Low Max seat, a leather Nardi Classic wheel, Works Bell steering boss, Nismo gearknob, and a BLITZ SBC I-D boost controller. Other than that the interiors pretty much stock apart from a bit of weight reduction with the back half stripped.
We invited Sekido out to come drift with us at Motorland Suzuka a few days later, which gave me a good chance to learn more about the car and get some photos of it in it’s natural element.
There’s no denying it’s a pretty eye catching car with it’s crazy Kids Heart graphics. The aero is full T&E Vertex with a set of 50mm D-MAX wide rear fenders.
The 40mm front fenders are from a new company called I-DESIGN and make the car look super aggressive!
In the wheel department the car usually rocks a full set of Work XD9 WMBs in 17×9.5J at the front and 18x10J at the rear.
While the suspension is taken care of with some pretty swish parts like a set of GP SPORTS G-Master Pros coilovers, Espelir Active Super Low Down springs, Uras Super Tie Rods and a GP Sports G-Master Super Knuckle kit.
All of which helps Sekido rip it out on the circuit. You can see footage of Sekido driving along with Phil, John, and Shane at Motorland Suzuka in the Outsiders DVD!
Since returning to England I caught up with Sekido and found out that the engine had blown recently, but his plans are to build an awesome 2.1L stroker SR20DET and get back out on the track as soon as he can afford it. Sekido’s attitude towards drifting is something that really stuck with me when I came back from Japan. He seemed so happy and excited about driving, and really wants to keep pushing himself to do better, but without losing the fun of it. At the end of the day fun is the reason were all into drifting in the first place.
– Daniel Bridle
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sweet write up man and like his style keeping it fun!
Had awesome fun driving with Sekido for those couple of laps. Still gutted we didn’t get there earlier so we could have spent more time at Suzuka Twin with him and the others, but there’s always next time 🙂
I watched DVD and a photograph.
Impressed with a good work very fantastically.
perfect in photograph, camera angle, all!!!
Thank you for coming to Japan♥