By Jeff Glucker
Bring A Trailer auctions are typically filled with aging German metal. There are loads of BMW, Porsche, and Mercedes-Benz coupes and sedans for sale. A handful of Italian cars filter in, and there’s been a nice uptick in American muscle as well. You’ll also find the occasional race car. What you won’t see if a modern professionally built drift car… until now. Papadakis Racing is auctioning off its 2017 Toyota Corolla IM Formula Drift Car, and it’s one of the best rides in the series.
While the Corolla is an oddball platform for Formula Drift, both Papadakis Racing and driver Fredric Aasbø make it work. And work well, in fact, as Aasbø campaigned this car to a second place championship finish in the 2017 season. Aasbø won it all in 2015 while driving a Scion tC, which was also an odd choice but Toyota likes to push it’s affordable compacts.
And then Papadakis takes those machines and turns them into extremely competitive drift cars. Using a heavily overbuilt turbocharged 2.7-liter inline four-cylinder engine, Papadakis Racing manage to produce 1,000 horsepower and send it out back to the rear wheels. From there, a four-speed manual gearbox controls that fury and, well, Aasbø does the rest. Don’t think you can hop into this and win unless you have the necessary skills to do so.
The winning bidder gets the car and a truckload of spare parts. This includes molds for the custom fenders and assorted body parts. On the inside, the car appears fully prepped for battle. A set of Takata racing seats and harnesses are bolted in place. There’s a fire suppression system on standby. And all of the expected racing electronics are still there as well. This is a ready-to-roll professional drifting machine.
There are just three days remaining on this auction listing (at the time of this writing), and the current high bid sits at $46,100. That’s well under what this Corolla is worth. There’s no question that this is a six-figure car and we’re curious to see if anyone will step up and pay that.
[Source: Bring A Trailer]
“Bring A Trailer auctions are typically filled with aging German metal.”
I’ve always seen BaT as more of a one-stop shopping destination for stray early ’80s BL Cars/Austin Rover Group orphans, but then again I’ve never tried one of their auctions.
Seems like it’s a lot of Porsche 911s, W123 chassis Benzes, and BMW 2002s, amongst other German offerings.
I think that joke went over Jeff’s head…
It did. I’m drinking more coffee to catch up.
My impression of BaT is perhaps skewed by the fact that I’ve purchased precisely three vehicles via that site, all of them before its current emphasis on running its own auctions:
1982 MG Metro 1300:
1982 Austin Allegro 3:
1983 Austin Maestro Vanden Plas:
BAT is usually a little too rich for my blood. BarnFinds.com is more in my wheelhouse (though still unobtainable)
BaT used to have a lot of really cool, affordable finds. I guess they just found a profitable niche, but I still like a lot of the fine machinery they present. Just clicking away the front pages with 9 of 15 entries being some sort of Porsche 911. The crowd is still excellent – knowledgeable, polite, and willing to share odd stories.
BaT used to have a lot of really cool, affordable finds. I guess they just found a profitable niche, but I still like a lot of the fine machinery they present. Just clicking away the front pages with 9 of 15 entries being some sort of Porsche 911. The crowd is still excellent – knowledgeable, polite, and willing to share odd stories.
I used to go on the site years ago when there were a few posts per day and there was some very interesting info posted by commentators, now there is so much stuff that there is too much to go through.
Yeah, I definitely still visit the page and thumb through it
Given the airbag scandal I wonder why Takata harnesses are so popular.
The seats and harnesses are supposed to be top notch still I believe. Still, yes that airbag scandal has put a fog on the company. Still, I see Takata stuff everywhere with regard to race track stuff.
I think the OEM supplier and the racing equipment side are technically separate companies as well.
Bring Zipties..