Joshua Deliz

FB Gallery Driver

Name: Joshua DELIZ

When did you first get truly excited about drifting? What cars and drivers influenced your car’s style and driving style?

If this was a year or 2 ago I could have simply just name dropped a bunch of OG drifting heads and videos and been done. The past year and a half or so it seems like what I used to turn to for inspiration is suddenly what I dislike about drifting. 180sx life for me simply started as just an admiration for low aesthetically pleasing vehicles, soon enough turned into peer pressure to street drift by all the older groups of kids I used to hang out at the skatepark. Regardless actually being good at drifting their cars were fast enough to run away from the cops. First and only time I ever got “caught” street drifting we were like 20 dudes deep at a spot and @chrischeezer stopped drifting his r32 gtr at the time and was filling his tires up with a bike tire pump lmao. Cops blocked us in and we all stampeded out. Of course I tried to squeeze my way out and a cop who had blocked my friend who was the one they saw drifting last stopped to grab me and my slow ass ka car. one court appearance and ticket dismissal later I was hooked. It was still to date the best summer of my life. We streeted every night, had just enough money to pay a 11 dollar toll (18 dollars now) to go to leave staten island to go to flushing meadow park and drift (youtube it there’s 100s of videos on there!)

That same summer I went to clubhouse for the first time to spectate for east coast bash. It was the year and I got to witness team breaking, drift faction and island slide rip A group. After watching fast, clean, precise driving from traditional styled cars with my friends who managed to basically become my family and my team mates, we knew that this is what we wanted wanted to be doing. The agenda was always the same but being shit faced, naming our crew team bath salts was not the best idea. We were always stealing recycled tires from pep boys and drifting the front street lot  in the middle of the day without ever being bothered. Cops would even come in to watch us and hang out with us! 

Fast forward 4-5 years later the driver progression of renamed FrontStreet grew, the opportunities we were able to partake in such as the final bout series, and traveling to diff venues up and down the east coast for events. Speaking on my own behalf I grew to notice between social media or in person, I felt like as if a lot of people more and more were starting to look for others for approval of their vehicles then going out and enjoying their projects. It became common to see cars only showing up at big events or people coming around when other “cool” cars or people where around. Drivers struggling with new setups because they were beyond un functional or even just not pushing themselves because they didn’t wanna ruin their car. This was some of my early beginnings of distaste for traditional cars. I found myself more and more looking at dope cars like, “wow that shit is hot but too bad that dudes a pussy and won’t drift that the way he should be”. My philosophy from day one has always been to build something good and enjoy it the way it should be enjoyed. A lot of dudes claiming to be about traditional drifting lifestyle had nothing but excuses as to why their cars are not at the track, but talked like they were out there all season long and that shit would really piss me off.

My next issue and the root of it all was I struggled with the direction of my 180sx build primarily within the last 3 years of its life. I tried to keep my car as traditional as possible but made some questionable choices along the way. I had a tubbed engine, 1jz swapped after 4 freak sr20 failures in 1.5 years, and had used over fenders with a million rivet holes on a type x car. Huge nono. Even tried to hide it under vinyl but I couldn’t hide it from myself that I wanted more performance. I banged that car up the point that at fb3 I crashed and ripped the frame rails off the car.

Video of Josh’s 180sx before it’s untimely demise at FB3.

At last I had a clear mind of not being tied to 180sx fitment rules, tire sizing, height etc. D1 Street Legal, drift muscle, Jesse Streeter and pink style videos had taken over my life for quite sometime and I was ready to unleash my real potential on an aggressive driving machine that can & must be suitable for street and track performance. I purchased my teammates totaled 1JZ onevia car, stripped all the bullshit off, SR swapped, cut it up and made it ready to fuck shit up. At the moment my car sports full origin lab aero courtesy of faction motorsports, 17/18 stagger 245/265 tires on a 300hp setup. Its a breath of fresh air to be able to drive a car guilt free of damaging aero on something as petty as a driveway or losing a rebuilt motor in less than 250 miles to a sewer cap like I did. Every time I drive this car I’m in disbelief that I punished myself thinking I couldn’t build a car that looked and performed equally as good. I took this car across the USA this year and pushed myself and this car to its full potential and I couldn’t have been happier with the results. While we have events such as final bout that has a strong emphasis on keeping it simple and remembering the past, we should be thankful for those drivers that went through the r&d to prove what works and doesn’t work. We should embrace the present and take advantage of the opportunities given to us to advance. The proof is on our face. Times and styles are changing. Change is good. It offers room for growth, challenges beliefs, can expose new strengths, but most importantly can open new opportunities. In my personal perspective what I take from the past is that no matter what direction you choose to go, execution is always a must and lastly dont mix up doing it right with going all out. And yeah, someone trade me a 180sx shell for my ps13 please lol.

Special Thanks!!! ~ to all the photographers that supplied photos! Be sure to check out their respective Instagram accounts - THEY HAVE AMAZING PICTURES! @squaredphoto @theryanlopez @roosterphotography @Huy.860_ @auto.photo.emotion (if your photos are being used in the post and would like them to be tagged please DM us ~ THANK YOU!)