Let’s get one thing straight from the off: we love drift modes. We love the idea of them, the spirit of them, and not just that they do exist, but that they can exist.
Even if they aren’t very good.
If you’re tempted by a car with drift mode – thinking it’ll turn you into a tyre-frying god to be worshipped by your mates – think again.
Drift mode first appeared on the (now discontinued) Ford Focus RS, unveiled at the 2015 Geneva Motor Show. An all-wheel-drive hot hatch shouldn’t be able to drift like a rear-drive vehicle – and it turned out it couldn’t. The RS’s Twinster all-wheel-drive system could send an average of 70 percent of its 257kW/440Nm to the rear axle, which could then cleverly apportion up to 100 percent to an individual rear wheel. By over-speeding the outside rear wheel – combined with a whole lot of ESC programming – you’d get a slide, lots of wheelspin and plenty of smoke. But it felt kind of… weird.
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Since then, the Audi RS3, Mercedes-AMG A45 and Volkswagen Golf R have copied the same idea in different ways, but with similar results: oddly artificial, unsatisfying-feeling drifting sort of like you’re telling the car to do it, and then it’s power-sliding on your behalf. It’s the kind of feature you’d use once somewhere, then probably never again.
An electric car is now even in on the act – the new Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. Its N Drift Optimiser hurls a whole lot of software at its two electric motors (up to 175kW front, 303kW rear) to support power oversteer, while there’s even a feature that mimics clutch-kicking of a manual car – seriously. (We’ll reserve judgement until we properly try it – to be fair, it sounds awesome.)
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The only cars that come close to a proper drift mode are high-powered all-wheel-drive sedans such as the Mercedes-AMG GT63 and BMW M5 Competition. Like old urban tales of pulling fuses out of Skyline GT-Rs to make them rear-drive, drift mode in these vehicles disables the front axle with the push of an on-screen button. Suddenly, you’ve got, in the case of a new M5 Competition, 460kW and only two 285-section rear tyres do deal with it – as well as an electronically locking rear diff, and plenty of wheelbase. Which is much more like it. The GT63, which works in much the same way, even feels to manipulate its ESC to promote corner-entry rotation, resulting in spookily easy power-slides.
But if you ask us, the real drift mode can only happen in your brain. Buy a car like a Toyota GR86 or Subaru BRZ – or any rear-driver with a limited slip differential – and go to track days, drift days, skid-pan days and practice. Because there’s no greater feeling than doing something yourself – like a long, arcing, second-gear drift – and knowing a computer had absolutely nothing to do with it.
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