ETS turns one!

Its with great pleasure and pride that I am announcing the Engineered To Slide websites 1st birthday. Please read on for a look back at what has been achived in this short amount of time.

Engineered To Slide started life as just another blog, the name instantly came to me and I quickly setup a blogspot site within minites. I liked the idea of having a journal of the highs and lows, being able to share my life with like minded people, I liked people taking inspiration from the things I did, I felt like I had something to contribute to the automitive internet world. ETS is infact all just one person, I am so busy all the time with drifting and building my cars that its quiet easy to have 100% original content, 1 year ago my good friend insisted he build me a proper website to reach out to more people and hopefully make the ETS brand a little more than a part time blog.

Excactly 1 year on and the stats tell me that what im doing is tottaly worth it, over 700 posts, 350,000 visits and nearly 1,000,000 page views from all over the world make this tiny little 1 car garage maybe the busiest in the world.

I am a 28 year old car fanatic that loves nothing more than being around cars, I love all forms of car life, from shows to drags, burnouts to drifting, hot rods to motorbikes. I attribute these to my slightly different ideas to tackle my builds, theres inspiration everywhere if you look for it.

Drifting gives me a sense of freedom, its been my addiction since I first had my licence, an RS2000 Ford Escort, dirt roads and an 18 yearold at the wheel normally ends up sideways, the ability to artistically link a series of corners with the use of power, brakes, steering input and speed gives you an amzing sense of acomplishment, its a freestyle sport much like BMX and I cant imagine life without it.

Drifting quickly began to take up a lot of my time, the name Engineered To Slide is actually excactly how it sounds, the “engineering” component is the massive amount of hours I spend on preparing and upgrading my cars, absolutely everything is done by myself and everything is on a budget, the “‘slide” component is the payback for those hours, its the 160kmh entries where all that work starts to pay off, the buzz is incredible and the reliability of the car means that buzz can last a long time.

A lot of you may have visited this site to see whats happening on the drift ute, an idea I had 4 years ago finally took shape this year, from a bare body shell with absolutely no idea on how to bend, notch and TIG weld tube to………

8 months later this is how it looks, in that 8 months I have built a tube bender, tube notcher, bought a TIG welder and self taught myself everything about chassis fabrication. A normal week would involve about 6 -10 hours work on this project, a lot of that involves just standing there trying to figure out the best way to do something. Its an amazing feeling to see a dream become reality, metal tube just sitting on a rack, then bending it, notching it, welding it and then standing back to see what then next peice of the puzzle will look like. Its been a lesson in patiance for me, focus on the small steps, do them to the best of your ability and the finish product will then just happen before you.

Mid way through 2011 my drifting changed, my years of experiance, statistics from this website and ADGPs return ignited excitement into the Australian drift scene, Andrew and Amy from ADGP made me the Victorian Brand Ambassador and they wernt the only ones that put their trust in me.

Federal tyres in association with Wheeltech agreed to help me out, having fresh Federal rubber on the car all the time made life so much easier.

BRAE Fabrication answered my cracking manifold woes and produced a custom manifold to solve my problems for both the Hilux and the 180SX.

Motul Oils supplied me with onshelf product to make services and reliability of drifting much easier.

Genuine Origin Aero from Savanna Motorsport are in control of making sure the 180SX looks how it should.

Bodytek Automotive Styling are in charge of the paint and making sure the 180SX is always shiney.

Dr Drift will also be back onboard with me to keep the tune as good as it has always been.

On top of all this is I have developed merchandise and parts to sell online, its another avenue to boost the brand, make the builds more succesfull and build this site to make it bigger and better.  For this week only I am offering free postage on all products and including a sticker kit with every purchase. Just use the code HAPPYBIRTHDAY in the store to take advantage of this.

So what does the future hold for ETS? This year will be spent working hard on the Hilux build, traveling Australia doing the national ADGP series, developing more parts, redesigning the website and shop, keeping my 180SX looking and driving to the best of its ability. In between all of this i still have a normal 40 hour a week job, have to save for a larger house with a shed big enough to have everything in aswell as a workshop and an office.

Looking further into the future? Well your just going to have to find out.

Thanks each and every person who spends their time looking through this website, and dont forget to head over the to the shop and empty me out of all my stickers.

Regards

ETS.com