Maruti Suzuki cars are helping democratise drifting at Red Bull Moto Jam!

As part of the Red Bull Moto Jam, I got the chance to get behind the wheel of a drift car. On my way to the event, I conjured up images of me learning to go sideways in Abdo Feghali’s (Red Bull athlete and drift world record holder) BMW M4. No such thing happened. We were instead relegated to a Maruti Suzuki Baleno. My reaction was exactly like yours. “Baleno?” I exclaimed. “How in the world am I to ‘drift’ a front-wheel-drive car?”

Turns out, they’d thought about that. This wasn’t any old Baleno we were being given. This was a rear-wheel-drive conversion. The car was owned by Rakesh Bisht of Niklo Adventures — the man leading the team working tirelessly behind the scenes to put this Red Bull event together. It had been handed over to Sportech to be built, and the whole point was to build an affordable drift build. This one was under ₹3 lakh including the donor car, apparently. Interesting. Drifting has always been a very expensive sport to get in to with a big deterrent being the lack of affordable rear-wheel-drive cars. This was an attempt to remedy that.

The changes to the Baleno were massive. The first order of business was to swap the transverse engine layout to a longitudinal one with custom mounts. The engine itself was stock, save for a K&N air filter, in the interest of cost. The gearbox was sourced from a Gypsy and mounted to the engine. Drive was sent to the rear through a custom shaft. It featured a welded diff — a must for drifting — with the axle sourced from an Eeco. The rear suspension was also changed to leaf springs from the Eeco. This was preferred over a more expensive solution like coilovers, again in the interest of cost. It looks really interesting from the outside with the engine sticking out of the hood — a solution that was necessary to make the driveshaft and steering system fit underneath that hood.

It has led to some interesting packaging on the inside as well — for starters the gear shifter pops out of the top of the dash, at a strange angle. You’ve got to go upwards and downwards through the gate, rather than forward and back. There are backseats and a roll cage, along with a nice sporty steering wheel. Between the seats was a big transmission tunnel that sat quite high up, encasing the driveshaft underneath it. And of course, there was a hydraulic handbrake. I got a whole two sessions (of about two minutes each) in the Baleno. Not much at all, but it did give me a good first impression of how the Baleno drove. My first session out, I went and began drifting in the way that I had learned — turning in to get one side loaded up, then punching the gas to break rear traction and counter-steering to catch the slide. I thought the Baleno would be heavily underpowered and this would be a struggle, but that was not the case. Boot it, and sure enough the rear does step out. Of course, you need to really give it the beans to break traction else you will just understeer. Being a relatively long car, it slides out rather progressively giving you enough time to catch the slide and power out. Good fun, once you get the hang of it. On my second outing, Abdo insisted I use the hydraulic handbrake — something I was really not used to. Just getting my hands to do the right things between initiating and catching the slide was tricky and my second outing in the car was not as sideways as the first. All in a day’s work, though.

A build like the Baleno is a great way to break into the world of drifting. Especially when you factor in the cost of parts. Things will break and parts for a Baleno will be a lot more affordable than for a more expensive machine. And if you can imagine it, Sportech will build it. They already have some interesting builds with FWD to RWD conversions – the famous RWD Maruti 800 with the iconic Initial D livery and they also have a mid-engined Swift. However, go in with your eyes open. Many of the drifters told me that you will reach the ceiling of this car very quickly and will want to graduate to a proper RWD machine like a Mercedes-Benz or BMW soon. That may be the case, but if funds are an issue, this is a great place to start. Just make sure you have a safe place to practice as well!