Hey Taylor,
You recently broke the news that you will be running a Cadillac ATS on your Instagram feed. Thats really awesome and the drift fans love you for it. We cant wait to cover the build in the off season.
Lets introduce you to the Drift Illustrated fans properly, lets go way back to your early days of drifting and what lead you up to this point, Then we can get into the new build.
1. Tell us about your back story and how you got into drifting?
I started racing when I was 13 years old. I drove all different types of race cars, but finally after winning races and championships across multiple different series I wanted to try something different. In high school I had two friends Emmett Ashe and Cody Jett that were really into drifting so I knew about it and It always interested me. Finally one day I just decided to sell everything that I owned racing related and buy a drift car and that's how I got started.
2. What was your first drift car and were did you learn to drift?
My first drift car was a 1991 Nissan 240SX S13. I actually bought a car that already had an LS1 in it that someone simply never finished. I spent a couple thousand dollars finishing it and that was my drift car all the way through proam. I sold it to one of my friends who is actually rebuilding it to be his missile car now.
As far as where I learned to drift, I learned a lot of driving techniques and fundamentals through my different forms of motor sports growing up and that's where the foundation for drifting was learned. I still had to learn a lot once I actually started drifting. I won't lie hitting the occasional Walmart parking lot when I was younger didn't hurt anything either!
3. What was your first drift competition?
Believe it or not I didn't get into drifting to compete necessarily which will probably come as a surprise to most of the people that know me. I'm extremely competitive but I just got into drifting because I thought it would be fun. That being said my first competition and drifting was probably six months after I got into it, I couldn't help myself! I started competing with streetwise drift. I didn't do so well, but I kept working at it and eventually it started to click.
4. tell us how you took your passion for drifting to earn a formula Drift license?
You know, you just work at it. You have to work really hard at it if it's your passion. During my proam season in 2013, I think I was sixth or seventh going into the last round. The points were really tight, and, everything just fell my way and I had a really good event that day and ended up finishing I think third in points. Before that I really hadn't given a whole lot of thought to what I would do if I actually got my FD license, but once I did I decided that day that I was going to chase it hard as I could for as long as I could and did pretty well my first year of pro 2, and ended up learning earning my pro license in 2016.
5. Your first year in Formula Drift has seen some struggles. Tell about your first season as a pro? Was it what you expected or was the jump from Pro2 much bigger that you thought?
Of course Formula Drift Pro is challenging. But I would not say that it is more challenging than what I expected it to be. Every one of these guys in pro has earned the right to be there and they're in pro for reason. They're extremely talented and I knew it will be very difficult. That being said, We've had some mechanical issues this year the plagued us which is one of the reasons for building a new car for 2018.
6. So now lets get into your 2018 Formula Drift car choice. Whats the back story? How did you come to this decision?
First of all I love Cadillacs, I always have. I've been considering building a CTS for the last few years, but the timing and the money simply just wasn't right. This year some of the rules are changing for Formula Drift and the timing was just right to make a change. We chose the ATS because it has a slightly shorter wheelbase than the CTS. We chose the Cadillac because it's a newer car that still in production, it looks awesome and it's a marketable platform for the type of partners that we would like to attract. Also I'm very partial to GM engines and I'd love to run in the manufactures championship as well.
8. What can you tell us about how you got the car itself or how you plan on getting your hands on one.
I've been searching for an ATS for probably the past six months I've looked on auction websites, I've looked on the Internet, craigslist… All sorts of different places. I found this particular car at a salvage yard in Dallas Texas and my wife and I drove out there and got it just a few weeks ago. There was no reason to spend a huge amount of money on a car that I was going to strip down and redo so this was the best way that we decided to go about building kind of our FD dream car.
9. Walk us through some of your build plans, Like what motor package? will it be supercharged or turbo? anything you can tell us to pump up the fans.
Honestly, this is the part that still probably most up in the air. In a perfect world, we hope to stick with the LS platform that we are so used to at this point. Our partnership with Magnuson superchargers has been awesome so I hope to continue running a supercharged set up on the new car. I can tell you the car will look aggressive, it'll have a sweet set of ROVOS wheels on it... and we've had conversations with some people that build drift cars a lot better than myself to help me put this thing together and remedy some of our mechanical failures from 2017…Beyond that… I'll be as excited to share updates with the drift in community as I get them.
10. Now that the word is out that your building a Cadillac tell the fans how they can follow the build and your success in 2018.
Well, I'll be posting all the time on Instagram and Facebook mostly. You can follow me on either at @taylorhull82. I will also be filming all different types of videos on my YouTube channel, many will be focusing on the Cadillac build, and there will also be several with my Plymouth duster that I will continue to work on as well as my wife's Mustang.
Now for a bonus tell the fans 5 things that they did not know about Taylor Hull...
1. I have owned over 60 cars, more than 10 have been mustangs… This is my first Cadillac.
2. I absolutely hate mayonnaise.
3. Pat Goodin made me realize that it still OK to be a NASCAR fan. People will accept that I'm from the south and I can't help it! I
grew up idolizing Earnhardt as well!
4. This is my dog...Chuck Norris. She goes by the alias of Bella though.
5. I flipped my first car into the captain of the polices front yard when I was 16.