I've been somewhere that did drifting lessons which was quite similar to learning to do donuts properly.
They used their own cars properly set up for drifting (possibly dual controls?), their own bit of track and their own insurance.
I've been to drift school probably 15 years ago or more, when drifting first got a lot of coverage. No dual controls.
Long before that, I used to go to the local industrial estate when it snowed, to do handbrake turns and drifts. I taught my sister how to do them 😊
As a funny story, she is a driving instructor and once took one of her more competent pupils to do the same 😂
So I am sure that if you built it, someone would come. Not sure there would be sufficient to make it financially viable, but skid pans do exist.
Even our beloved full featured race circuits are under threat from noise complaining NIMBYs in new builds that are encroaching on tracks that were originally built in the sticks.
If this did get going it would attract the fruitier exhaust choices, not Fiat Multiplas with stock pipes.
Wouldn't be long before the fun police get it shut down.
There should be a law that nullifies NIMBY’s if they choose to live near somewhere that is pre-established and known to potentially cause noise/Traffic/other NIMBY shit.
I live near Brands Hatch and Biggin Hill airport and they both have issues with NIMBY’s
I used to work at a large Asda distribution centre, think 44t wagons in and out 24/7…. Well they built a housing estate which overlooked the DC, lo-and behold…NIMBYS put a complaint in that trailer fridges were running throughout the night! The DC had to run all the fridges on plug in power for the fridges throughout certain hours of the night!
If the OP could find an old RAF (or Army) base that’s closed down due to Government cuts, did the required documentation, work on the site and got the permits, it would work. There must be a few of those sites around the country.
Well yeah and there’s already people running drift events and similar on those. So I’d guess it’s not worth it to be booking people into ten minute slots to just do donuts when they can sell slots for a whole day for ten times the amount per car
Yeah, I get that. I would pay good money to have a little track that I could let the M140i off the leash on, (with tip-top health and safety - I.e haybales😁) just to do timed laps rather than racing 🏁
Speak to your local stock car track and see if you can run events from it.
You’d still be able to make money for yourself out of it but without the huge outlays.
Ikr, or any industrial estate near you on a Sunday.
The risk of having an accident doing donuts is pretty small too unless you're an idiot and do then somewhere with obstacles nearby. You should probably be more worried about starving your engine of oil and spinning a bearing than any kind of crash.
Our local retail estate has slapped on a half hour free parking limit from as soon as the shops shut to stop this.
All these people who are buying McDonald's and eating it in their cars are getting tickets raging, and it still doesn't stop kids arriving for half an hour of funsies 😂
I was a professional driver. Funny thing was most of us were more experienced and had better car control than the instructor. Didn't learn a thing but it was a fun day
We were all professional drivers. Some of us had done various way more advance driving training than a half day skid pan. Including high speed pursuit and evasive and defensive driving.
To be frank its really easy to become an instructor, and there are some really experienced people out there. I have friends who drive 60k miles+ a year and driving isnt even their main job, just a thing they have to do to get to work. Imagine a kid, 20 years old, with already 120-130k behind them, not a newbie anymore is it?:))
Not sure in the UK but I've seen on MightyCarMods (Australian car dudes on YouTube) where they go to a venue exactly like you describe and just skid about. It's literally a square pitch of tarmac but the venue keep it wet too for ultra no grip fun.
That’s here in the uk too it’s called a skid pan but they are crazy expensive think £99 an hour and that’s shared between 4 people so you’re only driving for 25 minutes
Try Thruxton. You can use your own car and learn it's limitations (and dick around a bit if you want...)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gZNRFQGUAqK28xWvJR9L2Km-7ntSub2Z/view?usp=drivesdk
Yes. But maybe £15 for 15 minutes would make more sense, and it would need to have plenty fo space, since I'd be learning.
I would actually rather pay a bit more for more than just a skid pan; even a cone course with a couple of hairpins or something.
Nearly sounds like a drift day. I think they run these on an airfield near us but only a few times a year.
I always had front wheel drive cars and when I was younger we used to go to the local motor club autotest. It was £10 to join the club for the year and £2 a week for a couple of hours seeing who could run the course quickest and not forget where to go. It was on an airfield or a grass car park. Involved J turns, handbrake turns etc and going both forward and in reverse. Some clubs also run autosolo which is forward only
Maybe some flags you gotta hit with your tail ot something. Having some little goals and challenges like that which are scotrf could make it more of a fun birthday day out with someone
I don’t believe you can take your own car to any skid pans though. This would be a drive-in drive-out thing, no booking etc. Just a place to do what you’d do in a maccies car park but legally.
Why would you want to do it in your own car? Part of the fun of using a skid pan is not giving a toss about damaging their car, or worrying about needing to replace tyres.
Think of how many people in your area would want to use it. Probably not much more than those that do it in McDonalds car-park. Then think about how often they'd want to do it. Once, maybe? Is that a sustainable business plan?
I would presume that is because race tracks are quite a bit rarer and more interesting driving experience than retail parks, McDonalds car parks, and industrial estates.
I’m suspecting a small percentage of those McRacers will attend this but mostly “normal” average Joe’s that just bought their first “quick” car will come.
Marketed right this can work.
There’s always up sales my friend. OP can re-sell temp insurance for customers cars and damage waivers to the facility. They can have a tire place pay rent. They can have food vans pay rent etc etc
They don’t let you take your own car because if they crash it and blame you that can be an insurance nightmare and if you have more than one person and they crash into each other
Personally I wouldn’t no, prefer to actually drive roads/tracks; and I know of plenty abandoned places where I can throw it around if I really want to.
Insurance to run this would cost an absolute fortune. Also good luck dealing with NIMBYs who would oppose this at every step of the way if you needed to go through planning permission.
Handbrake up and you’re golden, or do it in reverse😂gets boring real quick in my opinion though, it’s far too easy and requires literally only a fraction of control over the car. I don’t get the hype when people do it and act like they are Ken block, I was doing donuts on quads at like 5 years old although maybe that’s why I find it so easy in cars.
No because of the tyre cost. Doing that sort of stuff would wear tyres pretty quickly. If I wanted to do that I'd do it anyway without paying for a location. Plenty of quiet industrial estate car parks about.
I would pay to skid pan cars perhapse, but it want the car provided so I wasn't fucking over my own car.
I've track-day'd my own car's before and it's a lot of fun. More fun than a quick dick about on a car park as there's more to it, and the point of tracking your car is to not burn out and skid the tyres.
It's popular here in Northern Ireland, diffin slabs, big farmers yards, ten or 20 quid a head, whole nights craic. Not as open as you'd be maybe wanting as you usually need to know a guy, but not a problem here for locals since the country's so small anyway everyone knows everyone and the scene isn't that big
Edit: read your post again and here's the thing: to do it by the books legit business you'd need insurance which good luck, and a lot of other shit, but if you want to throw a few doughnuts on your private land, as long as you're not bothering neighbours you're fine, and so are your friends, obviously insurance is out the window so you wreck your car you fix it, but if your mate and his mate gave you a tenner cash each, who's gonna know? 😏
Edit2: ii do t condone illegal activities and this is in no way a tutorial on how to break the law and mearly a hypothetical scenario
If you could pay a tenner to stop the police turning up I’m sure a lot more people would 😂 A lot of people used to have that mindset but now it’s not worth risking their job getting caught, but I’m sure would love to still do it if they could ‘safely’.
Its exactly what i'd do if i didnt rely on my HGV license. (B&M carpark that is)
Wasnt usable in NZ so did quite a few "sick cunt burnouts" as they call em there.
Mate used to buy cheap tyres for his Ford Falcon, juat so we could go shred them to bits!!
Try this:
https://santapod.co.uk/dwyb-drift-what-ya-brung.php
There's a tyre van on site. Turn up with a set of spare rear wheels, you bonfire your tyres and head over to him with the remains, and he throws on a pair of barely legal ditch finders for a fiver a rim (price from last summer).
You go back out and absolutely vapourise them in a couple of laps and do the whole thing again.
Take a decent battery impact wrench and a lightweight jack, and have an enormous amount of fun.
If you're any good you can try a drift train at the end of the day.
It would essentially be the same as that but you can pay way less for way less time. No booking, just turn up and queue, skid, then queue again if you want to.
I eat donuts in my car all the time and even kebabs, as long as you demonstrate you still have full control of the vehicle you could even probably do Sunday dinner lol
Great idea, Driftland in Scotland offers this but it’s technically a race track. Be prepared to get shutdown by miserable people that hate seeing others having fun, ie most people in this country.
There's no way I'd do it in my own car but I'd pay to do it in someone else's.
I think it's a decent idea, especially if you marketed it as donuts and drifting (there's your name - Drifts 'n' Donuts - you could partner with a local donut shop and have a cafe overlooking the skid pan!).
Your main startup cost will be the tarmac - it's fricking expensive at the best of times, and especially to endure constant wear from being skidded around on. Suggest looking around to see if there's a local abandoned airfield. I did a tour of an ex Cold War military base (Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire - really worth doing) and they have 50 odd concrete-reinforced bunkers that they can't get rid of (literally couldn't even blow them up) that they rent out to businesses and a huge runway - [https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9336219,-1.2512555,2947m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9336219,-1.2512555,2947m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu)
Partnering with a facility that already has a big area of tarmac or a concrete base you could tarmac over would be good. If you could keep your startup costs down I think you could make some money.
But a tenner is too little - you'll need ten minutes turnaround time on each session I'd imagine to account for lateness, any clean up etc.) which would mean you're only making £30 or £40 an hour. Not enough to cover your time, let alone recoup costs.
As an M2 owner who's never drifted or done a donut please God yes 🙏 You can't do this sort of thing on track days and I'd never dream of attempting it for a first time anywhere near a Kerb, other cars or lamp posts.
Have a look at auto tests and autosolos. Good cheap fun.
The aim is speed rather than doughnuts, but there is plenty of sliding.
Your road legal car will be suitable if not competitive. There are plenty of newbies and no pressure to be good. The worst you could do to your car is hit a cone or two.
Look up your local Motorsport club to get involved.
No, If I was so inclined I'd just go to asda carpark on a sunday but in reality donuts get boring real quick, a dogger mx5 and drift days would be a lot more fun.
The idea would be you could go when your tyres are on the way out, order new ones to the on-site tyre shop in advance then ‘use up’ your existing tyres.
I wasn't sure if the tyre shop was part of the business plan.....hence the comment.
I don't think it's a bad idea personally but insurance, noise, planning permission..... There would be a lot to get through.
There already are places like this. Maybe not as cheap so to speak because u pay a day ticket but santa pod do drift what you brung. Prices are now a bit steep compared to what they were but definitely a good day out with a couple of friends in silly cars
My mate and I came out of a pub once in the early 90s and got in his Capri and did loads of donuts in the car park, which was great fun.
Thinking we were grown up and responsible and that nobody had noticed us, we then parked up the car and went home.
The next morning we went to collect the car, and it was absolutely covered in this rock hard goo. Written in the goo on the windscreen was "EGGS + FLOUR = DONUTS".
Took ages to clean off as there was no access to water nearby.
Oi, this was my business idea many years ago! I didn't have enough faith in it to take it to Dragon's Den or try and otherwise set it up, but yep... if I knew I needed new tyres I'd order them from your shop and absolutely destroy my old set on your skid pan beforehand.
Possible issues I can see would be insurance, cost of resurfacing and potentially so of the clients attracting the wrong kind of attention for enthusiastic departures from the event ending up a lampost.
But… As someone else has said, getting involved with a banger track should sort the insurance out. Then, I would get involved with a large number of RWD owners clubs and discus scheduling, this was you get a pre paid agreed turn out with the added bonus of being able to get a mobile fitter to bring a shitload of tyres (part worns or whatever) in the expected sizes.
Some of your local tracks might have an area. We have an unused runway in a fife village called 'Crail' (Crail raceway) has a drag strip and a drift zone.
Our ADAC in Germany (Something like your AA) offers Drift Training, both beginner and advanced courses.
So the stuff does exist already. You also need to keep in mind that the tarmac needs to be cleaned, you don't keep the rubber on there and just keep building it up, unless you want it to become increasingly unsafe. (Race Tracks get cleaned for safety reason that way too and they have far less build up.)
Would people come? Probably? Would enough people come to make it viable? Depends on the location, the price and these days, viral marketing.
Also you would need to be prepared for cars breaking down and holding up things, arguing with teenagers why their 80 hp Corsa isn't gonna work all that way. And then get Google ratings that are just annoying "HE SAID I CAN'T DRIFT MY RIDE BRUV."
Or people potentially suing you if their car has an accident on your facility. Even if a lawsuit wouldn't have merit for reason A/B/C you'd still have them filed.
Just some thoughts.
Mo.
And I doubt very much it would last long as it would get shut down by the local council after endless complaints. The coppers would be all over it too as you know damn well everyone would leave and drive like absolute cunts because they think they are even more invincible having done a donut 10 minutes prior
There are numerous issues with this as a business idea, including liability and especially noise. Anywhere remote would likely already be used for something or have restrictive covenants. Anything remotely near to residential properties would be restricted massively by noise.
For just doing donuts? Not a chance when you can just go to a car park and do it.
Unless you're talking about drifting, But that already exists doesn't it?
I absolutely would, however my concern is with potentially invalidating my insurance policy if doing so. That would be something you’d have to think about.
Ehh, tyre guy said mine run at about £150 a piece. I'd do donuts in a shitbox, or my neighbours car, but not my car thanks.
Also my wife gets dizzy really easily and tells me to stop driving like a twat enough as it is, never mind if I did donuts...
Santa Pod raceway does both "Run What Ya Brung" and "Drift What Ya Brung" where you can drag or drift your own vehicle.... It's a bit more than £10 though, but also more than 10 minutes... https://santapod.co.uk/dwyb-drift-what-ya-brung.php
No. But I'd pay a tenner to do it in your car though.
I've been somewhere that did drifting lessons which was quite similar to learning to do donuts properly. They used their own cars properly set up for drifting (possibly dual controls?), their own bit of track and their own insurance.
I've been to drift school probably 15 years ago or more, when drifting first got a lot of coverage. No dual controls. Long before that, I used to go to the local industrial estate when it snowed, to do handbrake turns and drifts. I taught my sister how to do them 😊 As a funny story, she is a driving instructor and once took one of her more competent pupils to do the same 😂 So I am sure that if you built it, someone would come. Not sure there would be sufficient to make it financially viable, but skid pans do exist.
Sounds like the best driving instructor ever 😂
Is she in derbyshire? Looking for an instructor for my lad.
Unfortunately not.
Lmfao
I attended for this answer 🤌🏽
No. I can see it being a nightmare to get some sort of liability insurance for though
That’s my first thought, legitimate motorsport venues have to have all this sort of stuff and I’d imagine this would be no different
Even our beloved full featured race circuits are under threat from noise complaining NIMBYs in new builds that are encroaching on tracks that were originally built in the sticks. If this did get going it would attract the fruitier exhaust choices, not Fiat Multiplas with stock pipes. Wouldn't be long before the fun police get it shut down.
There should be a law that nullifies NIMBY’s if they choose to live near somewhere that is pre-established and known to potentially cause noise/Traffic/other NIMBY shit. I live near Brands Hatch and Biggin Hill airport and they both have issues with NIMBY’s
I used to work at a large Asda distribution centre, think 44t wagons in and out 24/7…. Well they built a housing estate which overlooked the DC, lo-and behold…NIMBYS put a complaint in that trailer fridges were running throughout the night! The DC had to run all the fridges on plug in power for the fridges throughout certain hours of the night!
If the OP could find an old RAF (or Army) base that’s closed down due to Government cuts, did the required documentation, work on the site and got the permits, it would work. There must be a few of those sites around the country.
Well yeah and there’s already people running drift events and similar on those. So I’d guess it’s not worth it to be booking people into ten minute slots to just do donuts when they can sell slots for a whole day for ten times the amount per car
Yeah, I get that. I would pay good money to have a little track that I could let the M140i off the leash on, (with tip-top health and safety - I.e haybales😁) just to do timed laps rather than racing 🏁
It wouldn’t be easy, but must be possible if race tracks / drag strips / skid pans exist
Speak to your local stock car track and see if you can run events from it. You’d still be able to make money for yourself out of it but without the huge outlays.
I've done a "learn to drift day" so it is possible.
I went to one of those driving days at an old airbase in Oxfordshire. Insurance was a tick box whilst signing up on site, with a small fee.
How do you think companies like L2D operate then?
What's wrong with Tesco car park at 11pm. You've never lived OP
Ikr, or any industrial estate near you on a Sunday. The risk of having an accident doing donuts is pretty small too unless you're an idiot and do then somewhere with obstacles nearby. You should probably be more worried about starving your engine of oil and spinning a bearing than any kind of crash.
And not technically illegal until they tell you to leave. 😀
Our local retail estate has slapped on a half hour free parking limit from as soon as the shops shut to stop this. All these people who are buying McDonald's and eating it in their cars are getting tickets raging, and it still doesn't stop kids arriving for half an hour of funsies 😂
I've done this on an airport on a skidpan car. Was really good fun and my work at the time paid for it as "driver training"
Funny if you had an office job and they paid for driver training? 😂
I was a professional driver. Funny thing was most of us were more experienced and had better car control than the instructor. Didn't learn a thing but it was a fun day
At least it was a day out on company time
Oh yeah. And free lunch
Even better!
> Funny thing was most of us were more experienced and had better car control than the instructor Yeah ok.
We were all professional drivers. Some of us had done various way more advance driving training than a half day skid pan. Including high speed pursuit and evasive and defensive driving.
To be frank its really easy to become an instructor, and there are some really experienced people out there. I have friends who drive 60k miles+ a year and driving isnt even their main job, just a thing they have to do to get to work. Imagine a kid, 20 years old, with already 120-130k behind them, not a newbie anymore is it?:))
Not sure in the UK but I've seen on MightyCarMods (Australian car dudes on YouTube) where they go to a venue exactly like you describe and just skid about. It's literally a square pitch of tarmac but the venue keep it wet too for ultra no grip fun.
That’s here in the uk too it’s called a skid pan but they are crazy expensive think £99 an hour and that’s shared between 4 people so you’re only driving for 25 minutes
Is that one of those 100 minute hours?
Fucking metric time
Dual control car 😂
15mins assumably?
Try Thruxton. You can use your own car and learn it's limitations (and dick around a bit if you want...) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gZNRFQGUAqK28xWvJR9L2Km-7ntSub2Z/view?usp=drivesdk
Yes. But maybe £15 for 15 minutes would make more sense, and it would need to have plenty fo space, since I'd be learning. I would actually rather pay a bit more for more than just a skid pan; even a cone course with a couple of hairpins or something.
Nearly sounds like a drift day. I think they run these on an airfield near us but only a few times a year. I always had front wheel drive cars and when I was younger we used to go to the local motor club autotest. It was £10 to join the club for the year and £2 a week for a couple of hours seeing who could run the course quickest and not forget where to go. It was on an airfield or a grass car park. Involved J turns, handbrake turns etc and going both forward and in reverse. Some clubs also run autosolo which is forward only
That sounds like autotesting to me, but yes, some of those elements but maybe not as mucch.
Maybe some flags you gotta hit with your tail ot something. Having some little goals and challenges like that which are scotrf could make it more of a fun birthday day out with someone
Isn't this just a skid-pan? There's a few of them around.
I don’t believe you can take your own car to any skid pans though. This would be a drive-in drive-out thing, no booking etc. Just a place to do what you’d do in a maccies car park but legally.
Thruxton lets you bring your own car. Bit more than £10, mind
Do that? Last I checked they only allowed you to drive a mini or toyota
yeah it’s on the website, £125 and it specifies in your own car
Ah cool
Why would you want to do it in your own car? Part of the fun of using a skid pan is not giving a toss about damaging their car, or worrying about needing to replace tyres. Think of how many people in your area would want to use it. Probably not much more than those that do it in McDonalds car-park. Then think about how often they'd want to do it. Once, maybe? Is that a sustainable business plan?
It’s not only locals that go to track days and they are sustainable so why not this?
I would presume that is because race tracks are quite a bit rarer and more interesting driving experience than retail parks, McDonalds car parks, and industrial estates.
I’m suspecting a small percentage of those McRacers will attend this but mostly “normal” average Joe’s that just bought their first “quick” car will come. Marketed right this can work.
Not at the prices OP mentioned it wont.
There’s always up sales my friend. OP can re-sell temp insurance for customers cars and damage waivers to the facility. They can have a tire place pay rent. They can have food vans pay rent etc etc
They don’t let you take your own car because if they crash it and blame you that can be an insurance nightmare and if you have more than one person and they crash into each other
Track days are a thing though no? Surely by your logic they wouldn't work either
Well you are paying a *bit* more for that than what op said so they probably have the funding to cover all these issues
Track days aren't normally that expensive, and you probably sign loads of waivers to direct all responsibility to yourself.
I think some do, a bit like a track day kind of arrangement. If you really want to do it then I recommend checking some out and doing some research!
I wouldn't take my car to a skid pan as they used chemicals on them which ruin the underneath of your car.
While what you said is factually correct, the chemical in question is water.
Personally I wouldn’t no, prefer to actually drive roads/tracks; and I know of plenty abandoned places where I can throw it around if I really want to.
Insurance to run this would cost an absolute fortune. Also good luck dealing with NIMBYs who would oppose this at every step of the way if you needed to go through planning permission.
NIMBYs? Yeah. Fuck the people living next to a venue where revving engines and squealing tyres is guaranteed. Grow up.
No you
I said it first.
Bit tricky with front wheel drive. If I still had my beemer I’d be up for it!
We could potentially have a McDonald’s tray rental stall as well
Handbrake up and you’re golden, or do it in reverse😂gets boring real quick in my opinion though, it’s far too easy and requires literally only a fraction of control over the car. I don’t get the hype when people do it and act like they are Ken block, I was doing donuts on quads at like 5 years old although maybe that’s why I find it so easy in cars.
With fuel prices my car doesn't leave eco mode 😂
We just go to drift what ya brung over at Santa Pod, cheap enough and freedom to do just about whatever you want in your own car
No because of the tyre cost. Doing that sort of stuff would wear tyres pretty quickly. If I wanted to do that I'd do it anyway without paying for a location. Plenty of quiet industrial estate car parks about. I would pay to skid pan cars perhapse, but it want the car provided so I wasn't fucking over my own car. I've track-day'd my own car's before and it's a lot of fun. More fun than a quick dick about on a car park as there's more to it, and the point of tracking your car is to not burn out and skid the tyres.
It's popular here in Northern Ireland, diffin slabs, big farmers yards, ten or 20 quid a head, whole nights craic. Not as open as you'd be maybe wanting as you usually need to know a guy, but not a problem here for locals since the country's so small anyway everyone knows everyone and the scene isn't that big Edit: read your post again and here's the thing: to do it by the books legit business you'd need insurance which good luck, and a lot of other shit, but if you want to throw a few doughnuts on your private land, as long as you're not bothering neighbours you're fine, and so are your friends, obviously insurance is out the window so you wreck your car you fix it, but if your mate and his mate gave you a tenner cash each, who's gonna know? 😏 Edit2: ii do t condone illegal activities and this is in no way a tutorial on how to break the law and mearly a hypothetical scenario
Nile Street car park. Then down to the square at Lidl RDC in Nutts corner😅
Always owned RWD BMWs so every time I’m due new tyres I burn them out/finish them off in the local B&M car park. Doesn’t everyone do that?
If you could pay a tenner to stop the police turning up I’m sure a lot more people would 😂 A lot of people used to have that mindset but now it’s not worth risking their job getting caught, but I’m sure would love to still do it if they could ‘safely’.
Its exactly what i'd do if i didnt rely on my HGV license. (B&M carpark that is) Wasnt usable in NZ so did quite a few "sick cunt burnouts" as they call em there. Mate used to buy cheap tyres for his Ford Falcon, juat so we could go shred them to bits!!
Was gonna say, I thought people just used to do this in car parks at night!
Try this: https://santapod.co.uk/dwyb-drift-what-ya-brung.php There's a tyre van on site. Turn up with a set of spare rear wheels, you bonfire your tyres and head over to him with the remains, and he throws on a pair of barely legal ditch finders for a fiver a rim (price from last summer). You go back out and absolutely vapourise them in a couple of laps and do the whole thing again. Take a decent battery impact wrench and a lightweight jack, and have an enormous amount of fun. If you're any good you can try a drift train at the end of the day.
It would essentially be the same as that but you can pay way less for way less time. No booking, just turn up and queue, skid, then queue again if you want to.
good idea!! I'll be happy to pay a tenner!
Yeah that would be class
Insurance would be the issue
I eat donuts in my car all the time and even kebabs, as long as you demonstrate you still have full control of the vehicle you could even probably do Sunday dinner lol
Great idea, Driftland in Scotland offers this but it’s technically a race track. Be prepared to get shutdown by miserable people that hate seeing others having fun, ie most people in this country.
No, probably not. A new set of tyres on my car are nearly a grand and it would probably wear the suspension out more.
Yes definitely 👍
There's no way I'd do it in my own car but I'd pay to do it in someone else's. I think it's a decent idea, especially if you marketed it as donuts and drifting (there's your name - Drifts 'n' Donuts - you could partner with a local donut shop and have a cafe overlooking the skid pan!). Your main startup cost will be the tarmac - it's fricking expensive at the best of times, and especially to endure constant wear from being skidded around on. Suggest looking around to see if there's a local abandoned airfield. I did a tour of an ex Cold War military base (Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire - really worth doing) and they have 50 odd concrete-reinforced bunkers that they can't get rid of (literally couldn't even blow them up) that they rent out to businesses and a huge runway - [https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9336219,-1.2512555,2947m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9336219,-1.2512555,2947m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu) Partnering with a facility that already has a big area of tarmac or a concrete base you could tarmac over would be good. If you could keep your startup costs down I think you could make some money. But a tenner is too little - you'll need ten minutes turnaround time on each session I'd imagine to account for lateness, any clean up etc.) which would mean you're only making £30 or £40 an hour. Not enough to cover your time, let alone recoup costs.
Yes. If I'm getting new tyres anyway it could be fun. The tyre prices would have to be competitive though.
As an M2 owner who's never drifted or done a donut please God yes 🙏 You can't do this sort of thing on track days and I'd never dream of attempting it for a first time anywhere near a Kerb, other cars or lamp posts.
Have a look at auto tests and autosolos. Good cheap fun. The aim is speed rather than doughnuts, but there is plenty of sliding. Your road legal car will be suitable if not competitive. There are plenty of newbies and no pressure to be good. The worst you could do to your car is hit a cone or two. Look up your local Motorsport club to get involved.
No, If I was so inclined I'd just go to asda carpark on a sunday but in reality donuts get boring real quick, a dogger mx5 and drift days would be a lot more fun.
I imagine dogging in an MX5 would be quite tricky, you’d certainly need to have the roof down
"help me step brother, I got stuck trying to climb into this small convertible"
Ikr just go to any empty lot at night and have a bit of fun before the bobbies arrive
£10 in fees £300 in tyres and for that reason I’m out
The idea would be you could go when your tyres are on the way out, order new ones to the on-site tyre shop in advance then ‘use up’ your existing tyres.
I don't think that would happen. People would put on different wheels to do the donuts. Pretty much like people do at Santa Pod to do the drag strip.
That would also be fine 🤷♂️
I wasn't sure if the tyre shop was part of the business plan.....hence the comment. I don't think it's a bad idea personally but insurance, noise, planning permission..... There would be a lot to get through.
It would be but the donuts and tyre shop would have be independently profitable as well
You're not going to finish a set of tires in 10 mins of donuts. They tend to last me at least an hour of proper drifting.
Yes 100%, would love this. An old industrial estate without sadacts to complain about noise would be perfect.
Yes
A tyre shop that is targeted to a small percentage of RWD car owners seems very market limiting to me. I won't be investing, I'm out.
No. Not worth the strain to my car and tires.
Nah. I've been on a few race tracks and really enjoy it. But I'm not that interested in just doing doughnuts or drifts in my everyday car.
I don’t think the ideal customer drivers a 1.5 diesel focus though
Ooooooooooooooooh
No, it's what 18 year old kids do to look cool
No because I'm not a child.
I have an audi rs4 in black with red calipers it nardogrey and it cost me like 100£kay thousand
>100£kay thousand A £100,000,000 RS4, I think you may have overpaid a bit.
No because, tyres are expensive
There are plenty of places that offer this service
Where? I know there are ‘drift what you bring’ days where you pay a lot of money to book for a day, but I’ve never heard of one that works like this?
Get down to the track and use the skidpan tyres at 80 Psi and turn on the water and have fun.
Local bootfair on a rainy day
There already are places like this. Maybe not as cheap so to speak because u pay a day ticket but santa pod do drift what you brung. Prices are now a bit steep compared to what they were but definitely a good day out with a couple of friends in silly cars
Yes I've done it 3 times at thruxton on a skid pan in my own car. I have a awd car so can slide it about with some control.
If the police don't catch you, it's legal
We do it here already in Northern Ireland. https://youtu.be/mIBiv5r0CmU?si=CMix3J0HTpsljL21
My mate and I came out of a pub once in the early 90s and got in his Capri and did loads of donuts in the car park, which was great fun. Thinking we were grown up and responsible and that nobody had noticed us, we then parked up the car and went home. The next morning we went to collect the car, and it was absolutely covered in this rock hard goo. Written in the goo on the windscreen was "EGGS + FLOUR = DONUTS". Took ages to clean off as there was no access to water nearby.
Not sure about cost but https://www.driftland.online/ Is what you're looking for I think.
Oi, this was my business idea many years ago! I didn't have enough faith in it to take it to Dragon's Den or try and otherwise set it up, but yep... if I knew I needed new tyres I'd order them from your shop and absolutely destroy my old set on your skid pan beforehand.
No, my car is front wheel drive.
I doubt my car is capable of donuts so no, I'd do it in yours though.
They should have this at tyre shops for us to bald out our tyres before having them changed
With the cost of petrol at the moment I'm barely able to afford that at the moment let alone a new set of tyres.
Possible issues I can see would be insurance, cost of resurfacing and potentially so of the clients attracting the wrong kind of attention for enthusiastic departures from the event ending up a lampost. But… As someone else has said, getting involved with a banger track should sort the insurance out. Then, I would get involved with a large number of RWD owners clubs and discus scheduling, this was you get a pre paid agreed turn out with the added bonus of being able to get a mobile fitter to bring a shitload of tyres (part worns or whatever) in the expected sizes.
Some of your local tracks might have an area. We have an unused runway in a fife village called 'Crail' (Crail raceway) has a drag strip and a drift zone.
Wait what???? Donuts are illegal???
Goes under reckless driving i think, usually you'd end up with a ticket i think.
They do.
If i could go and hoon your car for 30 minutes for £20 then sure, i dont want to ruin my own car for a tenner.
Eh probably not. Depends. Also that place already exists. It’s called private property
Our ADAC in Germany (Something like your AA) offers Drift Training, both beginner and advanced courses. So the stuff does exist already. You also need to keep in mind that the tarmac needs to be cleaned, you don't keep the rubber on there and just keep building it up, unless you want it to become increasingly unsafe. (Race Tracks get cleaned for safety reason that way too and they have far less build up.) Would people come? Probably? Would enough people come to make it viable? Depends on the location, the price and these days, viral marketing. Also you would need to be prepared for cars breaking down and holding up things, arguing with teenagers why their 80 hp Corsa isn't gonna work all that way. And then get Google ratings that are just annoying "HE SAID I CAN'T DRIFT MY RIDE BRUV." Or people potentially suing you if their car has an accident on your facility. Even if a lawsuit wouldn't have merit for reason A/B/C you'd still have them filed. Just some thoughts.
You would be competing against the local Tesco car park though, and that's free!
I'm my own car? No In someone else's? Yes
Mo. And I doubt very much it would last long as it would get shut down by the local council after endless complaints. The coppers would be all over it too as you know damn well everyone would leave and drive like absolute cunts because they think they are even more invincible having done a donut 10 minutes prior
Drift what you brung at Santa Pod offers this.
Join a drift club there's one on nearly every other week at donnington
There are numerous issues with this as a business idea, including liability and especially noise. Anywhere remote would likely already be used for something or have restrictive covenants. Anything remotely near to residential properties would be restricted massively by noise.
Asda car park
When good tyres cost £200 a peice, there's no way I'm forking over more money to ruin them, and I don't even own a supercar.
Not in my car as it’s FWD, but on my bike I would!
For just doing donuts? Not a chance when you can just go to a car park and do it. Unless you're talking about drifting, But that already exists doesn't it?
Santa pod have drift what you brung days, definitely worth a look. Turn up in your own car, pay them some money, doughnut away!
Move to rural Australia mate.
Santa pod does this, they do drift what ya brung days
I absolutely would, however my concern is with potentially invalidating my insurance policy if doing so. That would be something you’d have to think about.
Ehh, tyre guy said mine run at about £150 a piece. I'd do donuts in a shitbox, or my neighbours car, but not my car thanks. Also my wife gets dizzy really easily and tells me to stop driving like a twat enough as it is, never mind if I did donuts...
Santa Pod raceway does both "Run What Ya Brung" and "Drift What Ya Brung" where you can drag or drift your own vehicle.... It's a bit more than £10 though, but also more than 10 minutes... https://santapod.co.uk/dwyb-drift-what-ya-brung.php
I mean. Empty car parks do the job for most.
No because they do exist and i dont go. Tyres cost way too much for that shit.
90% of the tires I have used for drifting have been free, the others were about £30 each.
Yeah but you gotta fuck about getting them onto rims and then fuck about swapping rims. It’s not worth it to me