RUSSIAN DRAG CARS- THEY'RE FUCKING MENTAL! PART ONE...

This is a Lada, running a Lada rotary engine (yes, they exist), powering the front wheels, with a HUGE turbo, and it runs 9s in the quarter! And this isn't the maddest one either...

The internet is a wonderful thing, it's made this world WAY smaller, and has shown us things, just by searching for them with Google, that we'd either never see otherwise, or at best only see if we were lucky enough to find that a magazine had hunted these things down.

It's not PERFECT though, as while it's not hard to search for stuff from English speaking countries, it's fucking tricky if the country doesn't speak English, and it's nigh on impossible if the alphabet they use isn't even close to what our is- You can't easily Google words that use letters your keyboard don't even have!

Granted, Japan is well covered despite the language and alphabet barrier, partly as they use a lot of English words in their tuning, and partly as the Japanese car scene is world famous, but even from Japan there's a whole lot we don't see unless someone who can speak the language tracks it down and share it.

But other places, less famous places? Well, there's very little to be found, if anything.

I mean, Russia, do you know much about the tuning scene in Russia? I've seen a few things, but nothing much; mostly drift cars. Due to the lack of press it gets you'd think the scene is pretty small and the cars are mostly quite tame, but no, fuck no, their drag cars for example, front, rear, and 4wd, are fucking MENTAL, and that's what this feature is all about.

I can't speak Russian, or read Russian, or anything close, so I don't know all the info, but prepare to mutter "What the fuuuuck" to yourself a great many times, as we take a look at some Russian drag cars...

Well, it's a Mitsubishi Eclipse, the car made famous by Fast And The Furious, and a pretty badass looking one too, and the air filter sticking out the headlamp kinda indicates it means business, but what's under the bonnet? 
Well, some of these have Evo 4G63 turbo engines and 4wd as standard, so you'd imagine this has a big power one of these, right? Well... "What. The. FUCK" moment coming up...

It's a muthafuckin' 2JZ! Fitted transversely and powering the front wheels! I dunno about you, but I've never seen a transversely mounted 2JZ in my life. It fits amazingly well, and shit, it's a properly mental spec one too...

Badass long runner tubular manifold, huge custom inlet, big coils, huge turbo, dry sump by the looks of it too, and so far it's ran a 9.1sec quarter, and, well, it's got 1127bhp!

Next up, an MR2 Turbo. No engine swap this time, the original 3S-GTE heavily tuned this time, but it runs 9.7sec quarters and pulls some fucking massive wheelies...

They love Japanese cars in Russia, but Russia is the home of Lada, so there's a lot of them too, but nothing like what we're used to here...

This Lada runs 9.1sec quarters thanks to a big power 1.5JZ engine under the bonnet!

It's not the only JZ Lada either, this one runs 9.3s...

Maybe it's a stereotype, but it's easy to imagine Russian tuned cars as awful looking DIY jobs, and indeed some are, but even these are bloody fast. This old Prelude looks ridiculous, serious DIY fibreglass bodywork going on, but it's powered by a naturally aspirated Honda B-series engine and STILL runs 11.1sec quarters!

While we're on the awful looking DIY lightweight bodywork theme, check this out. A FWD Lada, still running a Lada engine, albeit turbocharged, but runs 10.7s!

Anyone who's been in to the Japanese car scene for a long time will remember in the early 2000s the Skyline GT-R drag racing scene was HUGE in Japan, with tons of dedicated and ridiculously fast R32 and R33 GT-Rs, but most seem to have disappeared, not seen for many, many years.
Ever wondered where they all are? Well from what I've seen, they're all in Russia! There's countless 8sec Skyline GT-Rs in Russia, not to mention absolutely tons of them in the 9s- Soo many I'm not going to show them in this feature. But they've got them in the 7s too...

This R32 is the fastest of them all, running 7.4sec quarters via a Powerglide gearbox, but while the others are RB powered, this one isn't...

Yep, that's a Nissan GT-R VR38DETT lump, but running two BIG turbos, and well over 2000bhp if my shonky Russian translation is accurate.

The second fastest R32 GT-R is only 0.1 of a second slower mind, and IS RB powered...

7.5sec quarter mile from a flippin' badass looking R32 GT-R with a mega RB30 lump...

Another red RB30 engine'd one is only slightly slower, at a still crazy 8.1sec, and while it just looks like a red R32, it's got 1200bhp, the exhaust manifold is pretty funky and puts the turbo by the headlamp, and it's got early RB20 cam covers, which always look good...

Last of the Skylines I'm going to mention is this R33 GT-R, again running a ridiculous 8.2second quarter mile, with a similar exhaust manifold to the one above...

Skylines aren't the only 4wd straight six turbo Japanese cars running low 8s in Russia. This 1500bhp 2JZ Soarer runs 8.2s. "Hang on 4wd Soarer?!" Yep, fucking 4wd!

They seem to have a thing in Russia about converted normally RWD Toyotas to 4WD with GREAT effect, as well, here's a Supra road car that runs mid 9s and is also 4WD...

Perhaps the most unexpected 4wd Toyota is this one, a big 4 door JZX90 that runs 8.3s...

It actually runs a modified Toyota A340E gearbox, and a BIG power 2JZ with nitrous too.

I knew JZXs were popular in Russia, but the amount of them, even normal road cars, that run 10sec quarters is mental, but I'm gonna show you this one as not only as it runs high 9s thanks to the obligatory big turbo JZ lump, but also looks cool as fuck...

In the UK we're used to JZXs being drift cars, and are usually 550bhp tops, but in Russia they laugh at a mere 550bhp. The JZX100 below (RWD and 2JZ powered) runs 8.6sec quarters! That will be WELL over 1000bhp then...

​THAT'S ALL FOR NOW, BUT THERE'S PLENTY MORE, IN FACT SOME OF THE MADDEST THINGS ARE TO COME IN PART TWO!
STAY TUNED...