BMW E36 LTO Drift Car – From Drift Banger to 1,100BHP Monster

Some projects start with a carefully thought-out plan.

This wasn't one of them.

Our E36 originally came into the fleet as little more than a rough and ready drift car. It already had a Toyota 1JZ under the bonnet and enough of the right bits to get us out on track, learn, have some fun and destroy a few sets of rear tyres.

And that's exactly what we did.

It wasn't particularly pretty. It wasn't supposed to be. It was a practice car that we could jump in, abuse and not worry too much about.

Until eventually the 1JZ decided it had enough and threw a couple of rods out of the side of the engine.

At that point we had two choices.

Find another cheap engine, throw it back together and carry on.

Or do what we normally do and take things far too far.

You can probably guess which way we went.

From Drift Banger To 1,100BHP Monster

With Ultrace 2024 just a few weeks away, the idea quickly escalated into building a proper Auto Finesse drift car.

Not just something capable on track.

We wanted something that could sit amongst the best show cars in Europe and look completely at home, then fire up, drive straight onto the drift circuit and get absolutely abused.

Show car meets race car.

And we had less than a month to make it happen.

The dead 1JZ was pulled and the guys at CDK Tuning sourced a Toyota 2JZ to replace it.

But dropping a stock 2JZ in wasn't really going to cut it.

The engine was completely rebuilt with forged pistons and rods, an upgraded plenum, single-turbo conversion and an entirely new fuel system before being installed and sent to Yenspeed Tuning for mapping.

The result?

More than 1,100bhp.

In an E36.

That should do it.

Live To Offend

Power was only half of the equation.

While the engine was being built, the shell headed to Colourkraft for a complete transformation inside and out.

The centrepiece is the full Live To Offend widebody kit, designed by our friend Khyzyl Saleem — better known as The Kyza.

We've always loved Kyza's ability to create cars that look almost impossible in the digital world, so taking one of those designs and turning it into a genuine 1,100bhp drift car was exactly the sort of thing we could get behind.

The LTO kit completely changes the E36.

Huge arches. Wild proportions. Aggressive without looking like a collection of random bolt-on panels.

Finished properly, it looks more like some sort of '90s touring car that escaped from an alternative universe.

Underneath, though, everything needed to work.

The car received a serious chassis setup using BC Racing suspension, with EBC Brakes helping keep everything under control.

Custom three-piece Rimscarnated wheels fill those enormous LTO arches, wrapped in Nankang rubber that's rarely destined to live a particularly long life.

Function On The Inside

The same philosophy continued inside.

If it didn't need to be there, it came out.

The interior was stripped and built around what you actually need in a drift car — roll cage, Recaro bucket seats, hydraulic handbrake and the controls required to manage what is now a fairly ridiculous E36.

Everything is functional, but like the rest of the car, we wanted it finished properly.

Because that's really what this build is about.

A drift car doesn't have to look like shit.

Built For Ultrace

The deadline for the whole project was Ultrace 2024 in Poland.

We'd debuted the Datsun there the year before, so we wanted to arrive in Wroclaw with something new.

The final Finesse Racing livery was designed by Blackfish Graphics and installed by Identity Wraps, the car was detailed, loaded onto the transporter and sent across Europe with barely any time to spare.

Then we unveiled it at Ultrace.

A freshly built, LTO-bodied, 2JZ-powered, 1,100+bhp E36 drift car, finished to the standard of a show car.

There was really only one thing left to do.

Go drifting.

No Trailer Queen

That's probably the most important part of this build.

It would have been very easy to finish the E36, park it on the stand and spend the rest of its life keeping it immaculate.

But that's not why we built it.

Since its debut we've driven it hard at events across the UK and Europe, from Ultrace to Silverstone, Players Goodwood and the LZ World Tour at Mondello Park.

And when we say hard, we mean it.

We've broken it.

We've fixed it.

We've covered it in rubber.

We've gone through plenty of tyres.

That's the deal with this car.

Underneath all the immaculate paint, wild bodywork and show-car detailing is a genuine drift machine with more than 1,100bhp waiting to light the rear tyres at every opportunity.

It started life with us as a battered practice E36.

Then the engine blew up.

Less than a month later, it was one of the wildest cars we'd ever built.

2JZ. 1,100+bhp. LTO widebody. And absolutely no intention of keeping it clean.

See the original Ultrace debut story or explore more Auto Finesse project cars.