While I was down at Huxley Motorsport on Friday evening I thought it’d have been rude not to take a look at Steve Saunders’ legendary JZX90 Mark II that was booked in for a roll cage and other work at Huxley’s new workshop.
As a street-driven JZX that gets dealt a lot more abuse than the vast majority of other RWD Toyota saloons in the UK, Steve’s car wears its battle scars on its sleeve. A little too prominently it seems, as it was finally deemed time to get rid of a few of the worst dents.
The now-repaired rear left corner that you see in the photo above was caved in after Steve got a little too intimate with the Driftland wall at the Finalboss 2015 event. At the time it was dealt with with a massive hammer but it’s now looking absolutely fantastic thanks to Huxley’s work.
A rear crash bar and jacking point has also been fabricated and installed. While jacking up an S-body using the rear diff is normally the given method, it’s an awful lot harder on a big saloon due to the larger distance between the rear bumper and the rear subframe (an issue I commonly have to deal with on my Laurel).
Of course, the main reason this Mark II was at Huxley Motorsport was to receive a custom fabricated roll cage. Safety regulations are forever getting stricter at UK drift events and, while Steve and his JZX don’t plan on taking part in any competitions any time soon, a roll cage is required in order to drift with other cars at some of the better practice days.
While some bolt-in roll cage solutions are available for JZX models, they very rarely meet UK safety regulations. Unfortunately, cages that meet these requirements often come at the expense of most of the interior creature comforts and result in the loss of any rear seating in a four door saloon. While this may sound trivial to some, I can confirm that the whole novelty of having a big four door drift car is that you can take your mates out with you and have a laugh, be it on certain tracks (regulations permitting) or simply for a drive on the road.
Steve also feels similarly and wanted to retain his rear seats without compromising safety. The answer to this request is a removable rear X-bar, which can simply be bolted in when it’s time to hit the track and removed when it’s time to return to comfort mode. The door bars are also removable if required, while the rest of the cage has been welded in place.
The rear hoop always has to sit quite far back in a saloon and this is unfortunately unavoidable. You can’t fit a proper roll cage to a car like this and retain 100% accessibility, so it’s always going to be a case of “mind your head!”.
Considering how aggressive Steve’s drifting style is, I think it’s definitely for the best that he’s drastically improved the safety of his 20+ year old Toyota. If anything, I hope it makes his driving even wilder now that the chance of potential death has been decreased somewhat!
