Daigo Saito knew he wanted to drift when, riding his motorbike, he saw a white Mercedes sedan sliding about on the mountain roads near his home in Saitama. His dad, wanting to keep his son on the straight and narrow, bought him a front wheel drive Mini and Saito immediately wrecked it trying to learn to drift. Then he bought himself an S13 Nissan Silvia and, so the legend goes, spent the next 36 consecutive hours practicing his new obsession, only pausing for food, fuel, and tires. Not long afterwards the S13 joined the Mini at the great racetrack in the sky. Ya gotta break eggs to make an omelette!

Fast forward to today and Saito has won both the Japanese D1GP championship and the American Formula Drift series. When you’re the only pro drifter in history to capture both titles you get special toys, like this, the Liberty Walk x Fast Five Murcielago. It began its current life as the personal runabout of Wataru Kato, boss of Liberty Walk, and was chosen as a drift project because Saito wanted a challenge. Swinging the Lambo’s mid-mounted 6.2 litre V12 around behind him would do nicely. First, he’d need to get rid of A LOT of the parts that left the factory in Sant’Agata.

For a start the doors are now carbon fibre. This is a big, heavy car and every opportunity for weight saving has been capitalized on. The V12 stays, but now features four Nissan throttle bodies (which work with the twin engine control computers better than the original Lamborghini setup), dual Bosch fuel pumps, and an unsilenced straight pipe exhaust. The engine’s connected to an honest-to-god, row-yer-own six-speed manual transmission and as a whole it makes 640 horsepower.

The interior is gone, replaced with a top-quality roll cage and, of course, the steering has been completely revised with new components and geometry. A mid-engined drift car sounds like it shouldn’t work, but the car’s setup and Saito’s talent make it happen. Another example of cars in Japan going in a completely different direction and arriving at something brilliant!