Everyone with a love and passion for all thing cars will have a select few car builders or social media pages that they follow religiously. For as long as we can remember we've been massive fans of Nigel Petrie and he's Engineered To Slide brand. For anyone that doesn't know or follow him he's a Geelong living Ford Engineer that spends any free time he has at home in his shed creating masterpiece's both 4 wheels and 2.
So when we heard that Nigel would be attending Motor Ex we knew we would have to take some time away from our own booth and make our way to the drift area to get some photos of what he had on display. He had 2 cars there for the weekend one of them being his red Nissan 180sx and the other one that i'll be focusing on in this blog was he's full tube chassis drift Toyota Hilux.
The amount of detail in this car is amazing and something that really needs to be seen in person to appreciate. I walked away and came back a hand full of times each time finding something new and eye catching. So much so that I gave myself the challenge of going through the car and trying to find something that wasn't created in the ETS garage. Believe me there wasn't many!!
Up front the engine of choice is the ever popular in the drifting scene Nissan SR20 with a sea of custom in house made bits. Personally I've always found with the SR20 finding a nice sounding one can be very few and far between but listing to the rasp coming out of the Hilux gets the tick of approval.
Moving around to the rear end of the car is a fabricators wet dream the symmetry in the bar work really soothes my ocd. The rear end houses a Nissan R200 diff and factory drive shafts. There's also a fuel tank, battery and air jack system making raising the car to change wheels a breeze.
The theme on the outside continues into the cockpit its all business. You wont find any air conditioning, radio or carpet in here instead you'll get to feast your eyes on a Racepak dash and switch panel and a Nardi steering wheel putting all the left and right hand movements into action. I also love how through out the whole car Nigel has opted to clear coat the whole chassis rather then covering it in paint.
Its really cool to see people in the car scene stepping outside the normal trends and showing off something completely different and after following the build from start to finish it was awesome to be able to finally see the ute in person. Thanks for reading see you all again soon.
We managed to get in front of all the crowed and shoot a quick video of Nigel sliding around he's wild ute. Hope you all enjoy.
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