For these Seattle-area car enthusiasts, vehicles are as personal as fingerprints

Tires screech. Thick clouds of white smoke fill the air. The crowd roars with delight. This is DriftCon, a competitive car drifting event at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Washington.

Dario Retych, 22, sits in the driver’s seat of his 1989 Nissan 240sx, a black and neon blue sports car that’s low to the ground. He wears a matching helmet, his gloved fingers drumming on the steering wheel. 

“I always get super nervous right before my battles,” Retych says, “but I just gotta chill out, have a good time, put on a good show for everybody.”

In a few moments, Retych and another drifter will compete on the raceway, sliding sideways around the course just a few inches from each other’s cars. As if they were dance partners , the pair is tightly synced – and so close you’d think they were attached. The objective of this race isn’t to finish first, but to demonstrate expert control of one’s vehicle by clearing angles sharp enough to cut through steel.

DriftCon draws hundreds of people out for drifting battles and a car show right next to the track. It’s just one of many events central to the Seattle area's tuner car scene, defined by enthusiasm for customizing otherwise ordinary vehicles with aesthetic and functional enhancements. In this community, cars are highly personalized — seen as an expression of their owner’s individuality.

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One of the shiniest cars in the sea of rare rides is Brent Brabant’s silver Nissan Skyline GT-R R33, a right-side driver he imported from Japan, due to it never landing on the American market.

Brabant owns the Sapphire Suns car club in Tacoma, a group that hosts morning meetups, late night cruises, and trophy shows like this one at DriftCon. 

“Whether you want to go fast in a straight line, you want to go fast sideways, or if you just want to look good sitting in a parking lot, we accept all that,” Brabant says. 

Performance and appearance go hand-in-hand here. Owners spend years — and big bucks — restoring 30-year-old cars, often with parts shipped directly from Japan.

Brabant has Hokusai’s iconic “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” laser engraved onto his engine block, the curl of the waves sparkling in the sun.

“These cars have souls, just like a human body,” he says. “We have tattoos — I wanted to give [the engine block] a little more depth than just a black engine bay.”

The vehicles, with their powerful engines and meticulous designs, can be a bit intimidating to the uninitiated. But Brabant and others say car lovers in the Pacific Northwest are eager to share their knowledge and grow the community.

“If I see a kid ogling over my car, I open the door and I put him in,” Brabant says. “I'm like, ‘Dude, play with it, touch stuff, go through the shift pattern.’ I am lucky enough that I can afford one of these, so why not share that with somebody else?”

Even though car owners are competing against each other for trophies and bragging rights, Brabant says this is a tight-knit community of people always willing to help each other out.

If a part breaks, for example, drivers will offer a spare or lend their tools. 

“We're all completely different,” he says, “but what brought us all together was the love of a car that never came to America, and that's pretty cool.”

JJ Equihua has been coming to DriftCon for the past three years as a fan. He has a camera hanging from his neck, ready to snap action shots as cars whiz by.

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Equihua enjoys chatting with the pit crews and people who work on the cars between battles. It’s sharing stories about turning wrenches and busting knuckles that keeps him coming back, he says.

“They’re all just rooting for each other and competing at the same time,” Equihua says. “It’s an awesome balance.”

One of the biggest drifting fans has the closest seat in the stadium: Justus Ostlund volunteers at the burnout box, the area on the track where drivers peel out before a battle to warm up their tires. 

Ostlund is only a few feet away from the cars as they spin in circles, smoke billowing out from the back.

“It’s just so much more exciting to be up close and personal with everything,” Ostlund yells over the noise. “You really get hit with the trunks of tires and the smoke goes straight in your face —- it’s almost as good as being in the car.”

Ostlund’s boyfriend is an announcer, his voice booming over the crowd to introduce drivers. He also drifts and Ostlund calls herself a “passenger princess.”

It’s an adrenaline rush to sit inside a drifting car and almost feels like it’s out of control, she says. But she feels completely safe on the edge of the track and says she trusts all of the drivers to not hit her while she’s doing her job. 

DriftCon is a major car event with vendors, music, and sponsors. But many car lovers in the Pacific Northwest can be found not at the track, but in a neighborhood parking lot on a Saturday morning. 

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Informal car shows, meetups, and weekend cruises can be found in almost every city. 

Some specialize in particular cars, such as old hot rods or fancy sports cars. But Tacoma Cars and Coffee is a bimonthly event that welcomes almost anything on wheels.

“We're a pretty inclusive meet, all makes welcome,” says Marty Pattin, co-founder of the meet-up hosted at Tacoma’s Titlow Park.

“We've had boats come down. We've had people tow their trailers down,” Pattin laughs. “Bicycles, motorcycles, we had a quad swing through. So if it's street-legal and you can get it here, we encourage everyone to just bring what you have.”

Pattin and his friend Zach Winter started Tacoma Cars and Coffee in 2021. They had to move to this larger park as the event grew in popularity and more people started showing up, which is a good thing, Winter says. 

“It kind of integrates … car culture with the public so there's not this shrouded-in-mystery thing happening late at night in some random Dairy Queen parking lot,” Winter says.

These casual, low-stakes events are a good first step for people to get out of their solitary garage and meet like-minded car lovers, he says. It may be a different atmosphere than DriftCon at Evergreen Speedway — but the love of cars and community is the same.

Back at the Monroe Speedway, drifter Dario Retych takes 4th place out of more than 50 drivers. He’ll be back for the next DriftCon at Evergreen Speedway on May 31.

“It's so exciting,” Retych says. “You just get across that finish line, you light up the tires, throw that smoke out, and make sure the fans have a good time.”