“To be honest, I wasn’t really into cars when I was growing up,” admits Ryan Acevedo of Jacksonville, Florida. “That was my dad’s thing. He was always tinkering with old Chevy stuff, swapping L98 Corvette engines into S10s and things like that. He always had something in the garage, whether it was one of those S10s or the LS-swapped ’67 Camaro that he was restoring. But right around my freshmen year of high school, I discovered drifting through social media, video games, and of course YouTube. I starting seeing this stuff in a whole new light, and I knew that I wanted to get involved in it.”

He enrolled in an automotive class at his high school, and with the support of both his father and Mr. Wager, his shop teacher, he embarked on his first build at the ripe old age of 14: A 1995 Nissan 240SX. “It was mostly stock, just a few light modifications, and we swapped in an SR20DET engine in our garage,” he tells us. “Going through that swap process with my dad was a landmark moment for both of us, working together on a project like that as a team.”

Acevedo started competing in the KlutchKickers Drift Series in 2019 before moving over to Formula Drift Pro-Am, a regional drift series that provides a pathway for amateur drivers to compete and earn a Formula Drift pro license. He ended up taking home second place in the Pro-Am championship in 2023, but these days he’s mainly focused on festival and exhibition events like Gridlife and LS Fest.

“After I started dabbling in events like these, I realized that I was having a lot more fun, and this kind of drift competition also offers more marketing opportunities for myself as a driver. The support and energy that these companies are putting into getting eyes on drifting from all of these different motorsport fanbases is really inspiring as a driver. It makes us want to work to achieve their vision for the event.”

Although he’s also currently enrolled in college, Acevedo managed to find time to start RAR Performance as well, an outfit that sells competition-proven parts for drift builds alongside safety equipment and other go-fast hardware. We caught up with him at this year’s LS Fest East, where his LS-swapped 2003 Nissan 350Z stood out even amongst the vast array of killer builds at the event.

“This isn’t actually my first 350Z,” he notes. “I had another 2003 before this one that I bought in 2020, and that was my first proper drift car. It started out as basically a stock 350Z with coilovers and a hydraulic handbrake. They’re durable and cheap to maintain, which makes this a great platform to learn on.” Acevedo chose to drive and compete with the car largely as it was for a while, learning strengths and weaknesses of the car and honing his skill behind the wheel before diving headlong into modifications. The build eventually evolved into a full-blown, LS-swapped competition car, but a catastrophic engine failure near the end of the 2023 season led him to the 2003 Nissan 350Z that you see here.

“We put a window in the block at an event, and we had a very short amount of time to figure things out for the next season,” he says. “So we bought a partially prepared 350Z drift car. And it was like, ‘OK, perfect, now we have something that’s pretty much ready to go. But it had been built by another driver and his family, and it was his first drift car build, so we ended up making a ton of changes to it anyway.”

Acevedo says that he struggled with the car’s setup and weight distribution during initial testing, and he and his father eventually decided strip the car down to sort things out on a fundamental level. Along the way they tossed the existing fuel system in favor of a setup that fit in the factory tank location, moved the rear-mounted radiator forward for better weight distribution, re-wired the car, and swapped in a new engine.

Under the hood now resides a 427 cubic-inch LS V8 from Smeding Performance with an LS swap kit from ISR Performance. Outfitted with Smeding’s own combination of high-performance hardware for the top and bottom end, the naturally aspirated mill is good for over 600 horsepower at the rear wheels. Acevedo also selected a Holley Performance Dominator EFI system to manage the rowdy powerplant.

“This was our first time using a Dominator EFI system in one of these builds, and I’ve been really impressed by it,” he says. “It’s a really robust unit that’s built to handle the abuse we put it through out on the track. We’ve had zero hiccups with it in competition, and it has allowed us to consistently log data without any weird communication failures or anything like that.” Acevedo also turned to MSD to bolster the ignition and help resolve a crank trigger signal issue. “It’s a common problem with Dart blocks because of the spacing, but switching to the front-mounted MSD crank trigger resolved the problem entirely. We’ve been developing this car for years now, and we’re finally at a point where it will work all weekend without any serious issues. That’s a major win in our book.”

The LS is paired up with a NASCAR-style GForce four-speed manual transmission, which in turn routes the grunt to a Bulldog quick-change rear end. The chassis, meanwhile, is outfitted with a Wisefab angle kit and rear suspension arms as well as BC Racing coilovers at all four corners.

The interior is a no-nonsense affair that features a Formula Drift-spec roll cage along with an OMP racing seat, an ECUMaster digital dash, and a hydraulic handbrake from ASD Performance. The Z’s racy exterior look is provided by polyurethane bumpers and side skirts from KBD Body Kits, while the fiberglass fenders were sourced from Hyper Hive.

“This is actually my fourth LS Fest event,” he says of LS Fest East 2025. “We did LS Fest East and LS Fest Texas last year, and the same two this year. I love how grassroots and low-stress these events are. And at the same time, we also get to share the track with some of the best drivers in the country, and the competition is incredible – this year’s LS Fest East had one of the most competitive fields of drifters that have ever come to an LS Fest event. The driving was just on a different level. But beyond the competition, one of the highlights of LS Fest East for me was the cruise into downtown Bowling Green. Getting to take the race cars to the downtown square to do the cruise and hang out with the locals was an awesome experience. The level of involvement from the local community and the city is felt and very much appreciated.”

Now that the car is firing on all cylinders, Acevedo plans to cap off the current season with the Black Friday Drift by OSW event in Orlando, Florida toward the end of November before setting his sights set on Gridlife, LS Fest, and the other exhibition events that he’ll be competing at in 2026. In the meantime, though, he’s got another project that’s keeping him busy.

“My dad and I currently working on another build – a Nissan S15 Silvia,” he says. “This one’s going to kind of a show car for the shop. The S15 Silvia is one of the icons of right-hand drive Japanese drift culture. It has been a really fun project for both of us – my dad has built a number of cars in the past, but never before at the race car level, and not for drifting. But he’s really become obsessed with the world of high-end, high-performance builds, and drifting as a sport. He’s really become a drift program crew chief, much to his own surprise. He’s like, ‘I don’t even really want to tinker with my own projects anymore – this is the cool stuff!”