For my first driver interview, I wanted to find a driver with an astute knowledge of drifting, a solid base in cars, and an interesting back story. Unfortunately, he was booked that day, so I settled on Nick.
I met Nick around the same time I met the rest of the crew I slide with, and he’s always down to slide or to just get into some crazy shenanigans (like randomly painting cars on a whim or getting pulled over riding sack to crack on a pit bike). He currently drives a 2001 E46.
I will be sampling his interview below, as well as narrating in between. Lets begin.
“My name is Nick Mutters, and I drive a BMW E46”
Nick has been interested in cars since elementary school. His earliest memories include playing with huge boxes of matchbox cars for hours at at time.
“I don't know what exactly got me into cars.” Nick said. “I have just always been interested
in them.” “My favorite Matchbox car was an old van, actually” He continued, “I think it
had fangs on it or something”
Nick quickly graduated from his small car fascination and into his first toy, an SVT swapped 3.0 Mercury Cougar.
“My first fun car was a 2002 Cougar with a 3.0 SVT motor swapped into it. It was
automatic and wrong wheel drive, but the suspension was so stiff in the rear that I
Could throw it into a corner and basically get the back to kick out. You could say I
like cougars.”
[At this point, he winks at me, and I shudder a bit. Kidding. There are a lot of incredibly vulgar things I’m leaving out of the article that are in the audio version that I have. The world is not ready for the minds of me and Nick when we are together.]
As Nick got over his wrong wheel drive obsession, he went through a whole litany of cars before finally landing on the E46.
“Let's see, I might as well just run down a list of what all I’ve owned.” Nick said. “I’ve had
an F150, an Outback, a Wrangler and a Chevy 1500. I also had a 240 Couple that I dumped way too much money into, a 2nd coupe that I swapped all the parts off the 1st coupe into, an S12 missile and some other random 240 that i was given..actually, I’m not too sure where that one went.” Nick continued. “I also had an 86 Camaro, a BMW 335i, which is my daily, and my E46.”
Overall, Nick’s parents support his obsession with motor-sports.
“They really don’t care what I do with my life. They just don’t like when I come home with
new cars and use all of their empty space for storage for all my parts and tires and
projects.” Said Nick.
I asked what got him into drifting.
“My first experience with drifting, besides just myself just stepping on the gas too hard and
sliding was with the 1st Forza.” Nick said. “I started drifting on Forza, and I’ve bought every game after that, and I am actually better than I like to admit. As stupid as it sounds, if I didn’t start drifting on Forza, I probably wouldn’t understand how drifting works as well as I do.”
After having almost every driftable vehicle imaginable, I wondered why Nick settled on the E46.
“Out of all the BMW's, I’ve always liked the looks of the E46. I wanted a newer chassis, but
not so new that everything is super expensive.” Nick continued. “I hate drifting. My initial
reaction when people wanna go slide is ‘I really don’t wanna go break something.’
As soon as I throw it into a corner, my mind goes dark and my conscious leaves. After that, it’s all asses and elbows.
I was unsure of what that meant. Un-phased, he continued.
“When you put a hydro in your car, this weird thing happens where you never turn around
in someone’s driveway again. It's so much easier to yank it, pull 180 and leave.
When you’ve been sliding all night on bald tires and you yank it while going down hill
on a narrow road and almost slide into a ditch, however, it can get your blood pumping.
I have a thing that we call psycho mode, where when bad things happen, my adrenaline
shuts down my ability to think properly. Everything after that is usually a blur, usually with
extreme casualties. Once my conscious shuts off, I basically become some crazy
professional driver. Foot to the floor, hands off the wheel.”
I wanted more specifics on his car. Driving like a maniac either means his car is super sorted or is a missile. I asked him what all is done to his car.
“Man, you really like lists, don’t you?” Nick quipped. I’ve got Megan Racing motor and
transmission mounts, Bimsport subframe mounts, ECS Tuning differential mounts, Billstein
Shocks with H&R race springs, Reinforced top hats, Turner reinforced and welded
subframe, AKG solid steering guibo, ECS solid differential guibo, SLR steering stuff,
Stage 3 clutch, and the Turner EGR delete.”
“Wanna hear another story?” Nick asked.
“When people peer pressure me, I will do basically anything. Basically, don’t tell me I won’t
do something. Me and 3 other people were in the car sitting at a light, with a cop 4 cars
ahead of me. When the light turned green, he started rolling away, and I said fuck it and
held a burnout behind him. It didn’t take long to hear an explosion. I thought I blew a tire, but as we drove away, i could hear the axle under the car. Whoops. I parked it in front of the shop we work out of until I could fix it.”
“While it was there,” Nick continued, “Everyone said I wouldn’t do a burnout with a broken axle, so of course I did a burnout with a broken axle, which broke everything around that, so ended up having to replace my shock, my LCA, my trailing arm and my axle.”
“If it ain’t broke, break it.” I joked. “Any future plans or toys?”
Nick sat silently for a second before responding.
“Besides killing myself?” Nick said, half joking. “I don't like to plan things. I know I’m not doing anything until I figure out my power issue. Hopefully my VANOS rebuild helps fix that issue. I want to get coilovers and I am also going with Garage 9’s steering angle kit. Then, once I start driving better, and I hopefully kill this motor (which will never happen. Damn German engineering) I’ll pop it out and swap a new one in with more power.”
[What Nick didn’t know at the time of the interview was that we would be painting his car pink in the coming days. Whoops.]
Nick continued. “If I had the ability to, I would get out of cars, but every time I try, I get
bored and I have to get another project. I hate cars, but I can’t get away from them. I don’t have any new projects on the horizon because I don’t like the projects I have currently. I don’t even want to drift, but..I gotta make my friends happy.”
Nick is planning on attending 1 or 2 events a month in the Midwest until his car breaks, at which point he will either start doing some of the modifications mentioned above, or just park the car and end it.
The Beerd