GOTHAM DRIFT: Mitsuoka Le Seyde, sideways

Wait, what?

Huh?

What the hell was that just now?

I need to get a better look at this.

Here we go.

This, ladies and gentlemen and pimps and Batman,  is a Mitsuoka Le Seyde.

What is a Mitsuoka, you may ask? You may have heard of the “Orochi” before, but if you haven’t, take a quick look at their website here.

They’re basically a company that takes pre-existing models, modifies the coachwork to look like Bentleys and Jaguars, and sells them to the general public as a new model.

This particular one, the Le Seyde, is meant to look like a classic Duesenberg, corrugated exhausts and all.

Can you guess what JDM model this is based on going by the window shape?

If you said S15 Silvia, you’d be correct. They made an S13 version before this one as well. Obviously it was somehow popular enough to continue on with the S15.

While this model isn’t the most common to be found on the street, I quite often see the ones based on the Nissan March (Micra) being driven around the suburb I live in by little old ladies.

The owner of this particular car used to drive an SR20-powered RX-7 that I believe he crashed. While the Le Seyde comes standard as NA and automatic, this one was a turbo five speed manual! They still go for about ¥2,000,000~¥3,000,000 used, so he must have found one for a good deal somewhere.

The extended wheelbase made it a little bit lazy to drift, but it was still amazing to watch. It is an S15 at heart, if you think about it, and the guy driving it is an experienced drifter.

Weird, eh?

If that was all a bit too much, here’s some more conventional Toyota loving by team Illusion.

Categorised in: Feature Cars　車の取材

This post was written by Alexi