The SkidZ drift event and Z reveal at ZCON was a blast! Nothing broke on or off track except my wallet with all the tires I went through! I really want to thank everyone that did a paid ride along or bought a cup or shirt, that helps so much with being able to go out to these events and put on a show!
Please take a moment to watch the video that Momentum Media put together for the drift event/real life Z reveal!
📸 Jack Hsu
The time is here for me to start posting a few things I’ve been doing to make money to get to drift events… besides the bodywork and paint, I’ve been making custom insulated cups and custom license plate frames. Below are a few of the items I’ve created.
If your interested in letting me create something for you please inquire at melissadrifts@yahoo.com. I can do pretty much any color combo and it can say whatever you want!
Pricing;
License plates; start at $45 for one, or two for $75. Plus shipping if not local.
Insulated cups; start at 45.00. Plus shipping if not local.
Add logo or graphics +5.00 (each color)
Premium glitter +10.00 (includes holographic, and ‘messy/starry glitter’)
The cups can be solid colors as well with no glitter. Solid color/no glitter cups are 55.00 and include an up to two color graphic/wording.
Everyone is entitled to a 10 minute break/Smoke break. My buddy Josh at work and I decided to take the term ‘Smoke Break’ into another form…a bit healthier.
Both of us are Supercharged now, we initially came out to take photos of our cars, but then I sweet talked him into letting me do some fancy driving around his car…took more coaxing than you would think!
Thanks Josh!
-Melissa Miller
Video taken by Billy Buzbee
Man in video running and owner of supercharged 370Z; Josh Gains
At the start of this trip to Willow Springs I had a series of unfortunate events, which started turning around. Cruising up from San Diego to Lancaster I’m cruising up the 2-lane highway and hit a tire-which surprisingly keeps my front lip in one piece, but takes the paint off of it 😦 We make it to the hotel the day before the event, and everything was fine, wake up the next morning and I’ve got a flat tire… which means drift spares are going on…less tires to cruise on during the event! We start driving to Willow Springs from the hotel in Lancaster and there was a cop that was going the opposite way as me, noticed i was speeding a little bit (flat tire made me late for the event so I had to hurry!) and turned around to start following me on the freeway…. I managed to downshift and slow the car down enough so by the time he actually did get behind me and follow me for a few miles he realized I wasn’t going to do anything wrong and got back on the median and busted a U-turn…phewww!
Overall this event once we got there was a blast. Much more structured than the usual drift events I’d been in attendance to. I only had the tires at this point that I had rolled in on for the whole day of drift and to get me the 4+hour drive back to San Diego. Horse Thief is a much faster track than just your basic parking lot event or skid pad, so conserving tires was hard… Some straits I wouldn’t manji and I would just cruise, and other times I would go all out. At the end of the day, my last run I ended up hearing “THUD THUD THUD THUD” on the second to last corner…oops… i babied myself off track, took a razor blade I had in the car for times like these and cut off the excess tire tread, packed up the car, and went home. I basically closed my eyes, crossed my fingers and hoped that everything would be OK and I would make it home safe.
And I did… but it was sketchy.
Photo Cred. @Chris_Waters
Drift Buffet is back! When Terry Henderson moved to China quite a few years ago, he left all of us grassroots drivers without his great events too.
Well, 2015 is the return of Drift Buffet! Thanks to Bryan Rogers for the resurrection of these great events. The first one was a smashing (no pun intended) success.
Here are a few photos from the event:
(Picture creds to Tyler Barnick, Chris Waters, Limuell Casinio, Myself, and Rachel Hernandez)
So this day was another great day. Although it started a little rocky for some of us, Garage Life started on fire and while everyone outside was running for water, I was running to my phone to try and catch some flames… this is what I got; 
Then, my second run of the day the wall just came out of nowhere and hit my wheel!
Maybe it was me that was excited and came in too hot and hit the wall, the tire still held air! for how hard i felt like I hit i think the wheel held up pretty well! Here’s the rest of the carnage …
I put this blast on Facebook but had to share here as well because I can’t describe what happened at the track better than I had previously; “I just wanted to do a medium/quick shout out to the guys at Courtesy Nissan, Billy, Phi, and Vince, you guys are awesome! From this past Saturday while at Willow Springs, I couldn’t get the Autozone down the street to have a clue what I needed (3 people I got transferred to), I called Phi at Courtesy, he got me a part number, I called Autozone back and they said they couldn’t get it. OK I can see how that can be a dealer only part, so I called the closest Nissan dealership-armed with the part number. Hoping that I could make the 30 minute drive and just swap it out at the track. But that guy at the dealership seemed very unenthused and told me he didn’t have the part. I asked if he could do a parts search for me if any other dealership in southern CA had the part and he said he could not…I live and breath car things-I know you can check. So after I got off the phone with that Nissan dealer, I asked Phi From Courtesy Nissan if he could check for me which dealers around me had the part. He did, and let me know Riverside Nissan had the radius arm I needed…Still too far for me to drive and be able to finish the track day, I bent the arm back into place and drifted for the rest of the event. Then today, I called Billy at Courtesy, gave him my card number, and he’s shipping out the arm! It just seems like when everyone else found it too hard, Courtesy just pulls through with the best service.” After we bent the radius rod back to somewhat normal I finifhed the track day and we all sang and danced…
So this was my first 626Drift event, and it was a blast! Some new faces, and some familiar, it was good to catch up with everyone and lay some skids! I didn’t have much time so take pictures of everything, (I’ll try harder next time) but here are some pictures mainly taken by Julien Thiebaud and Chris Waters on video.
If you’ve never drifted before, and want to give it a go… or if your a super awesome drifter and want to do some multi car tandems and just eff around, come out! No excuses! My 350Z I took out is riding on stock suspension…the only modification done to it currently is a welded diff.
http://www.626drift.com <—–How to sign up & more info!
Here’s a little video I put together from the event of myself…
Here’s a little video of a four car tandem run we did…
Lastly, an uncut run if you want to check out the track layout…
Thank you Drag Wheels for letting me represent you guys in the new Import Tuner Magazine! Neon wheels FTW!!
If ya’ll havent seen the newest issue of Import Tuner Magazine, follow these steps…
1) go out
2) pick it up
3) purchase it
4) open to page 68
5) gently tear it out
6) frame it
7) hang it on your wall.
8) enjoy!
FormulaD Long Beach is always the season opener and sets the tone for the upcoming season. With a lot of changing sponsors coming and going, the show was just as awesome as usual with what i’m pretty sure was a sold out crowd.
I hope you Can smell the smoke through these pictures!
(Photo Creds; Chris Waters, Mark Sternberg, Melissa Miller)
Pictures By; Chris Waters, Michael Hill, and Melissa
MelissaDrifts.com 