Drifting Reaches Russia
Who needs a mid-engined rice racer to drift? Latest dispatches from Russia show that with a little training, your can even drift when pulling a trailer. This creates so much enthusiasm that the camera car engages in a little sympathetic drifting as well.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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Not only you don't need a mid-engined rice racer to drift, drifting with anything mid-engined is usually a bad idea...
In my experience, all Russians have a strong dose of crazy mixed in.
I went on a road trip in Russia back in 1972 with my family, driving in a 1972 VW microbus rented in Amsterdam. I don't know how my father pulled it off, but we had joined up with a group of University students studying Russian. The roads in Russia were particularly slick when wet. One time we witnessed a car turn sideways in front of us, bounce into the ditch, and it wound up upside-down back on the highway rotating slowly. The guy driving the VW (the experienced group leader) was barely able to control our stop by pumping the brakes. When we got out of the microbus, it was so slick it was hard to even walk on the pavement; almost as bad as walking on ice. Surprisingly, no one was hurt. Our American expectation was to wait for the police to show up to fill out a report, wait for a wrecker to tow the car, and perhaps be witnesses to the accident. Instead, as other Russian drivers stopped, a group of men got together and heaved the car over rightside-up. Then everyone jumped back in their cars, including the guys who flipped, and everyone went off on their own business. And that was the end of that. Watching the video, looks like some things haven't changed.