I've been noticing a growing trend in the States which involves car enthusiasts moving away from the aesthetically pleasing but not-so-much-drivable scene that has dominated the past few years. Those people are now taking their cars they've spent so much money in making look cool to actually drive them at their local race tracks.

The Stateside drift missile movement is one of the extremes of this growing performance-centric trend. Cars that are all function and zero form. Drifters, who have grown up driving their beat up S-Chassis or what not, which now drive bacterially clean spaceships in the professional field now grow nostalgic for that grassroots feeling and the pleasure of driving as close as they can with their buddies. 

Formula D driver, Michael Essa, is one of them. He has put together this 1989 FC RX-7 in roughly 40 man hours and on a budget of $7,500.

Much like Essa's previous FC, which is now driven by Charles Ng, it features an LS1 V8.

On the suspension front, the car has an almost complete set of Stance coil overs except for the front passenger side. That's some unknown coil over which Mike found around his shop.

Mike has also cut holes into the wheel well for easy access to the suspension for quick alignments.

Why would he have one strange coil over and not a complete set?

Just Drift's Halloween Bash was the reason. And this was exact the moment why.

That impact sheared his control arm and coil over straight off!

Has the addition of the unknown coil over affected handling? It totally has. Mike has to take left handers a bit slower because of the difference. 

In the pursuit of driving as close as you can in tandem, dents and bangs is a missile car's fate.

This RX-7 convertible had all its convertible bits removed…

…and what's left of the trunk was welded on.  

The interior is as functional as it gets. It looks like a dangerous place to be, but if you're all strapped in, you're good to go. 

Notice the battery/battery box placement in the passenger footwell. The reason the battery was placed there was simple. Mike dug around his garage found a battery wire and that's how far the battery wire reached. 

Only whats needed to drive the car is featured in the interior. 

The car may look like it came straight from the junkyard but it has a few choice parts, like this Jerico four-speed dog box with grip tape mod. 

Mike welded in the cage himself. Everything about the car has been designed so all the parts can be easily accessed or easily taken off if he was to swap everything to a new chassis.

Missile drift cars has been around for a while now. Japan has been doing it for many years. But it was just recently that the missile car trend has grown to a global scale. 

The cars may not look like the most amazing drift cars. They're definitely not built to be demolition derby machines. Their purpose is so the drivers can perfect their skills during the off season without worrying about wrecking their cars, and most importantly, keep drifting fun. 

-Linhbergh