“We predominantly build Corvettes, but we work with pretty much anything that’s LS or LT-based,” says Tim Wallin, the owner and operator of the Sacramento, California-based tuning and fabrication shop Whiskey Throttle Racing. He tells us that both the shop and his motorsports efforts can actually be traced back to a business that he started during high school.

“I didn’t come from an affluent background. I was always looking for ways to make some money. I started a cell phone business when I was a teenager, and that kind of morphed into me buying and selling cars, which naturally got me into repairing cars, too.”

He says that he wasn’t partial to any particular brand and determined which cars to snatch up based on their financial potential. But as time went on, Wallin increasingly gravitated toward performance cars, a trend that got underway thanks to a fourth gen Camaro that had made its way into his garage. “When I first started I was just basically analyzing the market and figuring out what I had to pay for something in order to make a profit from it. But then I bought a Camaro with a V6 and a five-speed, and that’s when I realized how much I liked Chevys.”

He soon stepped up to a ’94 Camaro Z28 with a 350-cube LT1 under hood. After a few mostly-stock Camaros came and went, Wallin decided that he wanted to take his fourth F-Body acquisition to the next level. The initial plan was to build a drag car, but it became more of a multi-purpose performance machine as time when on. “It was a 2002 Z28, and I still own it to this day. That car got me into building LS engines – we did the heads, cam, intake, and some other stuff, and it made 460hp at the wheels. I’ve had a ton of fun in that thing.”

He scored an apprenticeship at a machine shop a few years later, where he built his own adjustable upper and lower control arms for the car. “I kinda got carried away with it after that,” he admits. “And that point the idea was to basically turn it into a car that could drag race and drift.” He installed a cage, a built rear end, and a custom suspension setup, along with a hydraulic handbrake system of Wallin’s own design that was built to work with Z06 rear calipers. He also toyed with the idea of dropping a twin-turbocharged LS into the engine bay, but a 2005 Corvette triggered a change of plans.

“I actually got the car for my little brother – just something fun to drive while he was in high school,” Wallin explains. “But he kind of lost interest, so I decided to get an angle kit and hydro for it, just to give it a try. That’s when I realized that I really liked drifting and I wanted to do it competitively.” Inspired by the C6 Corvette that Matt Field campaigns in Formula Drift, Wallin set out to build a machine worthy of the series.

Now motivated by a 427ci LSX with a Callies crank and rods, Mast Motorsports’ Black Label cylinder heads, and a choppy Texas Speed camshaft – along with a host of valvetrain upgrades and a Holley Terminator X Max ECU – Wallins says the naturally-aspirated mill is good for 598 horsepower at the rear wheels. The twist makes its way to the rear wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox from a 2011 Corvette with upgraded shift forks and pads, along with internals that have been cryogenically treated to increase their strength. Although it’s still underpinned by a 2005 chassis, the cradles, the transmission case, and the rear end housing all come from a 2011 Corvette.

The C6 rides on coilovers, billet aluminum knuckles, sway bars, and adjustable upper and lower control arms from Part Shop Max, while Moog hubs and GForce Engineer axles are on hand to improve durability. “I broke eleven axles, three housings, and two sets of spools last year,” Wallin recalls. “So East Coast Supercharging built me a chromoly spool for the rear end, and I put in a new carrier with ARP ring gear bolts.” A DSS driveshaft and a clutch delay valve are also on hand to bolster drivetrain strength.

Inside, the C6’s factory chairs have been swapped out for racing buckets and harnesses, while AC and audio system hardware has been tossed in order to make room for a custom center console switch panel. A bespoke fiberglass enclosure in factory instrument panel houses a Holley EFI Pro Dash so Wallin can keep tabs on the Corvette’s real-time vitals.

Wallin’s whip is also rocking a ZR1-style widebody kit from Supervettes that makes this Corvette half a foot wider than a stock C6 at both the front and rear. “The track width is 83 inches from tire to tire up front and 81 inches in the rear,” he says. “So yeah, it’s pretty wide.”

While the Corvette was built with the intention of chasing a Formula Drift license, it turns out that it’s also a pretty formidable contender in burnout contests. Wallin ended up winning the burnout contest at his first LS Fest West event back in 2019, and he took the title once again this year. “To be honest I really came for the drift competition, but I’ll take as much seat time as I can get,” he says. “I think the key to a good burnout is lots of a tire smoke, lots of noise, and some sketchy stuff. You can’t just spin out a bunch of times – you have to get up on the wall and make it look like you know what you’re doing.”

Recent months have seen Wallin prepping the car for the effort to earn his Formula Drift license. “I’ll be cutting off the back half the body pretty soon and putting in a rear firewall to seal the back of the car from the rest of it, and fabricating some stuff to hold the bodywork up in the rear,” he says. “That way when I put the bumper on the wall, it only damages the bumper rather than the inner structure. I’ve already boxed the frame in the rear and built a bash bar system, and I’m going to do the same in the front.”

And it should come as no surprise that more power is on the way as well. “Eventually we’re going to swap out the current engine for an aluminum Dart 502 from Golen Engine Service,” he adds. “It’s projected to make 900 horsepower at the flywheel on ethanol. The 427 is pretty dialed in as it is right now, but more power means more fun.”