This is the 8-Bit Miata. A 1991 bone stock car with over 200,000 miles and still counting.


Bryan Young got this car a little over a year ago for $1,000 and was using it as a daily driver while his 240SX project car was under construction, but it was taking too long so one day he decided to weld the differential on the Miata and take it to a drift event. What happened after was amazing and here's why.

Bryan is an avid video game player, he loves old school arcade games and older consoles, but he is also a very good simulator driver as you can see on his Youtube channel BYRacing77. He went from Forza and Gran Turismo to Live for Speed where you can customize every single setting on the vehicles. After many hours on the simulator he refined his driving and polished his techniques.


Chevy Nova SS VS Kaido Downhill





So, the first day he took his stock suspension and stock powered Miata he managed to drift the entire East Track at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park. The little car did great and most people wondered how this Miata was able to drift without any other mod than a welded diff.

Fast forward, two weeks later at Phoenix's Import Face Off, Vegas Drift hosted a mini competition based on two single runs and judged on style, approach to clipping points and speed. Bryan unfortunately spun on his first run, but on his second he absolutely nailed the track and the judges agreed to give him the highest score on the entire competition, which gave him 1st place!



We were into something here, apparently driving simulators does count as "seat time" which explains why a novice driver with a very regular car managed to drift so well without that much driving experience. Now, don't get me wrong, Bryan is a very good driver, he's been involved in rally racing and he used to drift his old MR-2 on desert trails when he was a kid. But still, he insist that his experience with simulators is where he has learned everything.

So since he loves old school video games and the Miata is such a basic simple car we came up with the idea to give the car a little 8-Bit treatment with some graphics vinyl, and it turned out great! It is actually hard to focus and some people has expressed dizziness while looking at it. Which means we did a good job!


So, last weekend he took on NASA AZ's challenge to drift Chuckwalla which features a 2.6 miles long and wide track, elevation changes and a big embanked turn known as "The Bowl". And the little car did surprisingly good!! So here's a teaser video for the CHUCKWALLA STAGE

Keep an eye on the 8-Bit Miata for more videos about going from a video game racer to a real life drifter on it's facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/8bitmiata


And Instagram

http://instagram.com/8bitmiata

And he made friends with Formula Drift pro drifter Danny George!