is a monthly

automobile magazine ''Automobile'' was an American automobile magazine published by the Motor Trend Group. A group of former employees of ''Car and Driver'' led by David E. Davis founded ''Automobile'' in 1986 with support from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, ...

dedicated to drifting and was the first of its kind. Published by San-Ei Shobo Publishing in both print and video format, it is the sister publication to '' Option'', ''Option2'' and ''

Video Option is a monthly direct-to-video magazine version of the long-running '' Option magazine'' introduced in March 1988 by Sunpro. The video has always been presented by Daijiro Inada, who did many of the tuner car road tests, either on a test track, o ...

''. Until 2007, when rival magazine ''D to D'' was published, it was the only magazine dedicated to the art of driving sideways.

History

''Drift Tengoku'' was launched in April 1996 as part of Option2. At that time, printed quarterly, it mainly published drifting related articles such as tuning as well as covering drifting contests, it also covered illegal gatherings that took place on public road, especially at the

touge A mountain pass is a navigable route through a mountain range or over a ridge. Since many of the world's mountain ranges have presented formidable barriers to travel, passes have played a key role in trade, war, and both human and animal migrati ...

. These features usually led to police visits to the magazine's office. The magazine featured many of the now notable drifting drivers such as

Ken Nomura is a drifting driver from Japan. He made his debut in the D1 Grand Prix in the 3rd round in 2001, driving the Blitz D1 Spec ER34 Skyline which he still drives. His nickname is Nomuken (のむけん) or Monkey Magic (as a reference to his compa ...

and

Nobuteru Taniguchi is a Japanese racing driver and drifting driver who currently competes in Super GT and D1 Grand Prix. Taniguchi is commonly nicknamed "NOB" (first three letters from his name, meaning "No One Better") or "The Pimp" as a reference to his S15 Silv ...

. At the following year, the magazine went bimonthly and the year following that, it went monthly. It was not until February 1999 that the magazine was published as a standalone magazine. The magazine celebrated its 100th issue in September 2007. The video version is different from the print as it solely covers drifting events run by the magazine.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Drift Tengoku 1996 establishments in Japan Auto racing magazines Bi-monthly magazines Automobile magazines published in Japan Monthly magazines published in Japan Magazines established in 1996 Quarterly magazines