AF LTO BMW 2JZ Hits The Track at Ultrace

It goes without saying that we love Ultrace, it’s now one of the biggest tuner car events in Europe. In fact, even before we moved into our European Distribution Centre here in Germany, our UK team have been making the trip to Poland for Ultrace for the last decade. And what’s more, they always like to show the AF love by laying on something a bit special at each and every event.

Last season saw the world debut of our Datsun Drift Car, and this year we thought Ultrace 2024 would be the perfect event to unveil a whole new Finesse Racing Livery. We also had our AF sponsored CDK Tuning BMW Drift Car – and its driver Archie ‘The Crazy Drift Kid’ Harmer – hitting the track with a new look, too. But, while our Project Stepside was off at another part of the show picking up a Top 16 Trophy, there was one other car to finally reveal to the pubic – our latest build – the LTO BMW Drift Car…

The story of this car is a little unusual. Rather than taking many months to put together, to make Ultrace, it had to be built in just a couple of weeks. The idea came from the whole team getting together with some of the world’s top builders and suppliers to create a full-on show car that’s built for just one thing – destroying tyres on the track.

With a full Live To Offend widebody, custom wheels, race chassis and a 1100bhp Toyota 2JZ engine, that’s no mean feat… it’s actually something of a miracle. But in the end we made it, and here’s the result…

This rather epic E36 started as a bit of a battered example that we originally purchased earlier in the year as a practice car for the many drifting events around the UK and Europe. It wasn’t all bad though, it was already fitted with a Toyota 1JZ engine, and a few other performance parts making it great to take on a few events, destroying many tyres along the way.

We pushed this car hard for sure, but after blowing a hole in the engine, and finding a few of our con rods in the middle of the track, we thought a whole new build was in order. We could let this one die, could we?

It was decided that the target for the build would be Ultrace. Unfortunately Ultrace was just a few weeks away…

First of all, that broken engine had to come out. The BMW drifting experts at CDK Tuning had this job completed in a matter of hours and started building up a rather crazy replacement – a fully forged Toyota 2JZ-GTE.

While they we’re busy bullet-proofing the new lump with new pistons, rods and a whole selection of other performance parts we shipped the shell off to the guys at Colourkraft for a full repaint inside and out.

Colourkraft are the team who painted our Liberty Walk S15 and Pandem Yaris GR, so they’re no strangers to fitting a mad body kit. And for this car we had them fit and fettle one of the maddest of them all – a full widebody from Live To Offend, designed by the Kyza himself.

With the paintwork complete, and a few essential extras such as a wild chassis setup from BC Racing and EBC Brakes, the custom 3-peice wheels from Rimscarnated, Nankang tyres, new Recaro seats and a whole new fuel system, the car was back at CDK Tuning so they could slot the new engine into place ready for the dyno at Yenspeed Tuning.

The final figure was in excess of 1100bhp, so it’s turned out a little more than a useable drift car – it’s an absolute monster!

And of course, this just wouldn’t be a part of the Finesse Racing Team without a full detail and our customary mad livery, would it?

After our detailers got to work with the Pro Series Polishing Compounds, the guys at Identity Wraps laid-on a full wrap designed by our friends at Blackfish Graphics here in Germany. Finally finishing up in the early hours ready to

With our now rather crazy-looking LTO BMW unloaded and displayed at Wroclaw Stadium, only one question remained. After all that effort in building what has to be one of the most comprehensive, well-finished drift cars out there, would we actually get it out on the track to get it flat out sideways?

Of course we did!

And that's the story of our LTO E36 hitting Ultrace in style.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this car build in time for the show. Including our friends at:

Colourkraft

Live To Offend

CDK Tuning

CSF Radiators

Identity Wraps

Blackfish Graphics

Rimscarnated

BC Racing

EBC Brakes

You can see more of our E36, and check out the full Ultrace 2024 Report in the Behind The Scenes Section Of Our Blog.