I’ve been working on this particular car couple years ago making standalone ECU wiring and tune on stock 1JZ swapped engine when former owner decided to sell it.
Never intended but it’s how I usually buy cars I got Altezza from him. It was just another stockish car with 1JZ swap and manual 5 speed BMW transmission and welded diff.

We’ve rebuilt 1JZ engine with forged internals, ARP, MLS head gasket and so on to make engine reliable and bulletproof.
Single Garrett GTX3071r 2nd Gen turbo makes 500hp at 1,0bar of boost which is more than enough for that grippy chassis!
I guess noone’s surprised that manual transmission got thrown away and the DCT took it’s place 😉
We’ve decided to go with E92 335i short ratio DCT to be able to use all of the gears while drifting without the need of using Winters differential.

Again…

Altezza was never on my wish list but after all those mods with DCT it’s by far my best drift car I’ve ever owned fun-wise.
Grip that this chassis provides, versatility of DCT controlled by HTG tuning GCU Gearbox Control Unit makes it perfect combination for grass-roots drifting!

Bartek Castelli – HTG tuning

I owned multiple project cars throughout the years, got even more on my wish list but I have to admit that Lexus IS200 (or in Japaneese nomenclature Toyota Altezza) never appeared on that believe me long list.
Never intended to get one probably because of it’s shape which was too ordinary for me – just normal everyday car.

One of the first things I’ve done to this car was custom made body kit, big spoiler and wider rims to make it look better.
Interior was upgraded with bucket seats, 4 point RRS harness, rollcage and a lot of tiny details.

Basically it’s a full interior drift car!

Sequential up / down shifter acts both as shift request input and mode selector. Heavy duty design and solid click sound makes that great motorsport feel and reduces chance of accidental shifting to zero. Isn’t that what’s super important while drifting? We all know it is 😉

7 inch display in place of OEM cluster shows all important ECU and GCU live data with nice and clear gear indicator in the middle.
What I have to admit is that this car is so much fun to drift, easy to use and acts like it has 200 more horsepower than it actually does. That’s because of full on-load up and downshifts, gear gear ratio, adaptive preselection and Clutch-by-Wire system.