NADINE SACHIKO HSU DRIFTS THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

“My mom got really mad at me and said, ‘You’re going to Temple City!’ That was my punishment. I graduated from Temple City High School at the top of my independent studies class - as a teen mother.”

Street Racing 101

Nadine went through basic training for street racing after transferring to Temple City High. At odd hours of the night, Nadine would slip out the window of her home and join her new friends. Back in the 1990s in the San Gabriel Valley, Nadine was in love with car culture.

San Gabriel Valley, just east of Los Angeles, has long been a hub of motor sports with lowriders, car clubs, cruising, and import car customization. The youth at Arcadia High had some Bimmers, but Temple City teens raced cars like Honda Accords in Ontario and City of Industry.  

“There was this girl who was drag racing. She was the only one. She had a purple Honda Civic coupe, and her license plate said ‘KIMBO’. And I thought, ‘God, that girl is so cool!’ I’m going to be like her. So then it was like all about the cars, and I didn’t even have a driver’s license yet!”*

Teen Motherhood

Nadine’s was sidetracked as a teen mother, trying to raise a daughter and going to college. When she moved out of her parents’ home, her cousin offered a car for $500. “It’s messed up. It’s probably not going to last much longer,” he told her. It was a 1989 Nissan 240SX.*

The Nissan 240SX 

Introduced in the North American market in 1988, the Nissan 240SX was the car of choice among the emerging drifting aficionados in the San Gabriel Valley. Based on the Japanese market Silvia and 180SX, the 240SX was a four-seater sport hatchback and sport coupe (Nissan offered a choice). 

Drifters singled out the 240SX for its rear-wheel drive configuration (an ideal attribute for the sport of drifting) and four-wheel independent suspension. 

The 240SX sported Nissan’s KA24E 2.4-liter cast iron block/aluminum head four-cylinder engine - a popular, durable workhorse engine that was also seen in Nissan’s Altima and Hardbody pickup trucks. 

It wasn’t the lightest engine in its class, but its four-cylinder configuration weighed less than the V8s in American muscle cars of the period. Accordingly, the 240SX was less front heavy and exhibited more drifting finesse when accelerating around corners compared to its sporty car competition at the time. 

From Beater to World Beater

When Nadine bought her cousin’s Nissan, it was not a good looker. The rear window was covered with a blue tint that was blistering off. She lowered the car, put some new wheels on, and thought she would get it looking good enough to sell it for a Honda Civic - probably the most popular car among her peers in the San Gabriel Valley. 

That never happened.

Nadine started frequenting Kinokuniya, a Japanese bookstore she remembered from younger years when her Japanese American grandparents took the family to Little Tokyo. 

Flipping through the Kinokuniya car magazines, Nadine realized her 240SX is the 180SX in Japan and is one of the most popular drifting cars around. She saw her car, as the 180SX, on the cover of one of the magazines. 

It started to snowball. Next thing you know, Nadine is drag racing her 240 and concluding that she has a pretty good reaction time for it. “I just had the hunger to race.”*

Then Came Benson**

In 2000, after a short period tooling around with her Nissan, Nadine met her future husband at a 240SX owners meeting. The guy with the cool car was Benson Hsu, one of the first American pioneers involved in the sport and competition of drifting.  

In the early days of drifting, Benson was a Drift Association Drift Day Advanced driver, serving as an instructor and amateur drifting competition judge. Benson won the Falken Drift Showoff before earning his D1 Grand Prix license.

By 2004, Benson went professional and competed in Formula D. He placed second at RS-R Drift Festival that same year. (See "Benson Hsu" at Wikipedia.com).

As Nadine explains it, she noticed Benson’s car before she knew who he was. The car was what’s known in drifting lingo as a Sileighty. The name comes from the popular art of modifying the front of a first-generation Nissan 180SX (in the Japanese market) or the 200SX (in the European markets) or the 240SX (in North America). The Sileighty featured the fixed headlight front end of the Japanese market S13 Nissan Silvia. Among 240SX aficionados, the Sileighty is the holy grail of bodywork modifications.

Said Nadine, “I would drive in the streets of West Covina to Azusa and would turn my head, ‘that’s a Sileighty!’ He was the only one I knew in the San Gabriel Valley that had a Sileighty.” *

Getting Serious 

“We started caravanning to owners’ meetings. Next thing you know, we were together.” Nadine Toyoda became Nadine Sachiko Hsu.

Benson introduced Nadine to touge racing, a form of Japanese street racing that takes place on mountain roads that often combines close quarters and drifting. This led to driving autocrosses, road races, karting, and eventually full on drifting. (See "About: Biography" at NadineHsu.com) 

Nadine swapped her KA24E 240SX engine for a Japanese domestic market 2.0-liter SR20DET 180SX engine with a turbocharger and intercooler. Along with the engine swap was a switch to a manual transmission to better control the new turbo engine.  

Breaking Barriers

“I actually did all my learning on the track, I'm really happy to say…which is funny because I'm the crazy girl that would jump out the window all the time and get busted all the time.” Along the way, there were the barriers for being a woman drifter, including comments on internet bulletin boards like, “Look at this girl, such a poser!” *

“I was always supported by the drivers. My friend, Yoshi [Yoshie Shuyama], and I were the first two women to be drifting in the USA, and that’s kind of a heavy weight to carry. Yoshi didn't really think about it like that, but I did. I cared about how I represent women. I wanted to do it justice.” * 

In 2002, Nadine became the first woman drifter in America sponsored by a tire company, Yokohama Tires. In 2003, she and Yoshi organized the women in the sport and established Drifting Pretty, an all-women drifting and racing school. In 2004, she established Team Drifting Pretty, the first all-women competition drifting team that went on to compete in the Formula Drift Series. The mission was to increased female participation in motorsports – and it worked.

Team Drifting Pretty broke barriers en masse in the sport of drifting. Altogether, approximately 100 women drifters were mentored under Drifting Pretty.

Drifting Pretty has been featured on Speed Channel, ESPN2, the local news, the LA Times, Import Racer, Import Tuner, LA Weekly, Super Street Magazine, Current TV, and CNN. (See "About Us" at DriftingPretty.com.)

In 2006, Nadine retired from professional competition. She does stunt doubling, exhibitions, and inspirational talks. "I will be in the Nisei Week Parade in Little Tokyo driving my other drift car, a white 350Z." 

And then in 2011, she began Sachiko Studio in Arcadia, a creative photography business. With inspiration from her four daughters, Nadine published children’s titles such as Sachiko Goes Racing and Sachiko and the Bully. Her third book in the series has been written and is in illustration stage. It's scheduled for a Kickstarter October 2025 release.

Nadine remains a Falken Tire Ambassador. "They happen to be my tire of choice for my daily drivers and drift cars, so I am over the moon that I get to represent such a wonderful tire company."

It isn’t easy being an Asian American teen mom; it isn’t being an Asian American woman in motorsports; it isn’t easy balancing parenting and business entrepreneurship – but Nadine did all of that AND wants to make sure she supports others to stand strong like her.

Her iconic hot pink Nissan 240SX - and her story - will be featured in the Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community exhibit sponsored by the Japanese American National Museum and situated at the Mullin Gallery on the South Campus of the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, July 31-November 12, 2025. On August 5, 2025, the companion book to the exhibit will be released, titled Cruising J-Town: Japanese American Car Culture in Los Angeles by Dr. Oliver Wang (the curator for the exhibit) with foreword by George Takei. Angel City Press at the Los Angeles Public Library is the proud publisher.

For a full list of Nadine's appearances, go to the Sachiko Goes Racing Appearances page here. 

* Watch and listen to Nadine Sachiko Hsu – From a Teen Mom to a ‘Furious’ Drift Racer & Mentor, My SGV Podcast, December 10, 2024.

** For those too young to know, there was a TV show titled Then Came Bronson, which was about a small town drifter (not the automotive sport drifter) who lends a helping hand to those around him while he himself searches for experiences that life has to offer. Bronson rode a Harley-Davidson Sportster. The show first aired about two months before the movie Easy Rider hit the silver screens.