Lexus IS300 is a Drift and Street Missile!
Built with drifting and streetability in mind, IS300 features 1UZ V8 with enough nitrous to deliver 450 horses at the crank, 380 in the back.
If there ever was a platform suitable for madness, the first-gen Lexus IS300 would be the choice. So much potential resides beneath the sheet metal, ranging from classy VIP builds to track-day rock stars. Throw in the extensive aftermarket support for these cars, and the only limit is one’s imagination (and finances).
One such badass IS300 build comes from Canada’s Fisch Racing. While most drift missiles are strictly track, this one is no stranger to the streets. Marcus Vandenberg of Roads Untraveled drove the Lexus a few months back at Mission Raceway Park in Mission, British Columbia for some drifty fun. This time, though, it’s all about letting hang out on the open road.
“Here it is once again,” said Vandenberg. “The Fisch Racing Lexus IS300, sitting here today prepped for just about anything the street or track could throw at it. 1UZ V8 under the hood with nitrous, six-speed 350Z gearbox, and a whole lot of competition awaiting its arrival at the track.”
As Vandenberg explains, the big V8 delivers 290 horses without the bottles. Once the nitrous is mixed with the fuel at the same time via the wet nitrous setup, though, 450 horses arrive; 380 hit the track. The result? A big kick in the ass that’s “way better” than VTEC, with tons of torque everywhere.
“It’s a triple threat, really,” said Vandenberg. “It’s taking the essence of Toyota, an incredibly reliable Toyota V8 engine, which for six days of the week would be used for drifting. Otherwise, on the seventh day, it would have just been left in the LS 400 to take your grandma to church.”
Fisch Racing’s custom touches include exhaust manifolds for the 1UZ, and a transmission cross member to support the manual. The sound the V8 makes, as Vandenberg says, is a sound drifters and other racers attempt to get out of other, lesser cars. Despite the lack of exoticness on paper, though, this IS300 slams it down on the track with the best of them.
“This is the IS F before the IS F,” said Vandenberg. “This is an analog IS F. If Lexus would have had the resources or the willpower to create an IS F a few years earlier, before all of those electronics, this would be it. This would be that car. It still has an incredibly responsive engine, but it has more feel to it.”
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