1,000 HP Four-Rotor Liberty Walk Nissan Silvia S15 Drift Car Thinks Outside the Boxy

Time and time again, the drifting realm delivers some of the most impressive builds out there. And with Wankel projects being all the rage these days, the time has come to zoom in on the mighty four-rotor S15 Nissan Silvia drift car coming from Japanese tuner Liberty Walk.

We’ve been following this car on the widebody specialist’s social media for a while. And the company took the JDM delight to last week’s Goodwood Festival of Speed, giving us a proper opportunity to discuss the shrieking titan.

Given the stratospheric status Liberty Walk enjoys, the developer isn’t the kind to stick to a single demo(n) car. So, while we covered its also-four-rotor-animated R35 GT-R earlier this spring, this S15 Silvia is just as impressive.

While this iteration of the Nissan coupe came about in 1999, the LB Walk Super Silhouette widebody it sports also harkens back to the boxy racecars of the previous decade. You may be familiar to the kit, since this is present on the ex-JDM Endless S15 Silvia that came to Goodwood as a stanced British build, splitting opinions like no other machine at the FOS.

For the record, the aero package adds about 80 cm of real estate on each side. And the simple front end approach is mixed with a more complex posterior, where the lower rear apron gracefully makes room for a competition-grade diffuser.

In pure motorsport fashion, if we look aft of the rear wing, we’ll find a composite rear window that makes room for the relocated radiator.

As for what’s under the vented hood, the factory turbo-four has been replaced by a 26B. This custom engine still uses the standard Mazda rotor dimensions (think: 654cc per rotor x four units = 2,632cc, hence the name). And, thanks to a twin-turbo setup, the Wankel motor makes around 1,000 horsepower, while being mated to a six-speed sequential tranny.

Now, the Goodwood Hillclimb was already familiar to the 26B thanks to Kiwi drifter Made Mike having gone sideways via such a setup in the previous years, all wrapped in an ND-gen Mazda Miata.

The 2022 Goodwood run

However, this S15, with the said presence (lens tip to HH Visuals for the pics below), appears even more menacing. For 2022, the Nissan was hooned by Tetsuya Hibino. The Japanese pro driver runs the said four-rotor R35 GT-R in the country’s Formula Drift.

For this year, the FOS drifting event tasked drivers with getting as close as possible to a few barrels and a wall that had sensons placed inside them.

And while Hibino’s initial run was unfortunate (think: barrels knocked around, rear bumper cracked), he subsequently put on a monstrous show, which you can see in the YouTube video below. The clip is a cut from the FOS feed, so you’ll also get to enjou the official commentary of his second run, which was successfully completed with one hand constantly out the window, waving at the 50,000 people attending the show.

The Liberty Walk S15 wasn’t the only rotary at the event, though. As we discussed earlier today, a British drifter took on the Hillclimb in the world’s first three-rotor C6 Corvetteโ€”the smoke is on the house.

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