Drift Hard, Stay True With LLDrifts

Drifting is something we only hear about from time to time in mainstream culture. But in reality, it remains somewhere on the margins, doing its own thing in its own way. Sometimes things like drifting pop out to us and we get a glimpse into a subculture that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen. That’s where Lauryn, AKA LLDrifts, resides. She rips around a track in cars that she’s modified from the ground up, while also showing viewers how to do it themselves. Ruffles and Complex have set out to show that you can do whatever you set your mind to, and so has Lauryn. She makes cars accessible to others and follows her own path while doing it. While coming up in a male-dominated industry, Lauryn Owns Her Ridges by staying true to her own tastes and passions and is quickly rising because of it. Of course, Own Your Ridges means owning what makes you, you. And in Her tenacity and will to rise has proven that she is a great addition to the ever growing world of drifting.

Your cars look awesome. But you seem to focus more on the function rather than fancy aesthetics in your videos. What makes your builds different from others on the inside, and what does Owning Your Ridges mean to you?

I think I mainly focus on function rather than aesthetics. I like to go for the factory look, with a little bit of spice. I don’t really do anything crazy. Each one of my cars has a very specific function for me. So for instance, I have a drift car, a show car, and a track car.

To me, Owning My Ridges means doing what I want to do regardless of what anyone else has to say. I think there are people who like what I do with my cars and there are people who don’t. But I think Owning My Ridges means staying confident in what I want to do with my cars. And if I want to do it a certain way, then that’s what I’m going to do. 

That’s awesome. Building off of that, you post a lot of drift content. What are your favorite places to drift and what got you into drifting and subculture?

So I had a friend when I was around 18, and he went to this off-road warehouse where he brought his drift car. He took me one time and I thought it was insane. I didn’t know what was happening but knew I wanted to be involved in it in whichever way I could.

So I ended up buying a drift car for super cheap. I didn’t really work on cars at the time at all. He and a lot of my other friends in the car industry helped me build that first car. Then after that, I started to go to local tracks near me.

One of my favorite tracks is about two hours away and it’s the closest track to me. It’s a family-owned track that they built in their backyard, and they did everything by themselves. It’s very grassroots and small, but it’s very homey and family-friendly. There are always a lot of kids and dogs around. I think that’s probably one of my favorite tracks, and that’s how I got into the drift scene.

That’s awesome. That’s what you need, a backyard feeling to kind of get into it because it’s hard to just go to a public place or somewhere kind of sketchy.

It is. And it’s an expensive sport. So it’s nice having these people around you to help out. I always know that when I go to a drift event I don’t have to bring everything because I’ll always have someone there that will have it for me or can help me out. It’s nice having a small friend group to go with.

You got your first drift car at 16 and you’re 23 now, so you’ve got good experience under your belt. In a lot of your videos, you do really accessible walkthroughs showing people how to work on their own cars. What was the process like learning how to fix and upgrade your own cars?

It was a process with a lot of trial and error. I started off when I was 16 when I got my license and was working on my own car. I learned very quickly that having a car is expensive. And if they break, it’s even more expensive. So I started with doing oil changes, and little stuff like filling up my windshield wiper fluid. And then after that, I got the opportunity to work at a family-owned car dealership.

Since it was family owned and a little smaller than a huge franchise, I got to be more hands-on which taught me a ton. A job that should have been an hour, would take me six hours. Doing that and being able to work on different kinds of cars helped me out a lot. It also got me more into doing performance stuff and working on other things that weren’t just basic maintenance.

When upgrading the performance of a car, how often are you faced with problems that aren’t part of standard operating procedures? How often do you have to think out of the box to find creative solutions when you’re trying to get a car to that next level? 

I would say almost 90% of the time you’re doing some kind of fabrication work or solving it some other way. Because the thing with having all used cars is that I don’t know what the owner did before me. I don’t know what their experience level was either. So you’re always learning new things about your car. If you’re buying aftermarket parts and stuff that’s not from the factory or from that specific car brand, they don’t always fit perfectly. I think a lot of people in the car industry know that. So you’re always having to come up with some little fixes, or looking things up on forums or other people’s YouTube videos to figure out how to make something fit right or look good. I think working on my own cars and figuring out how to go through that process has helped me out a lot when working with other people’s cars and performance parts.

How competitive are you when you’re going to events? Are you driven to figure out what everybody else is doing and make it better?

I would say I’m pretty competitive. But I think that at my level of drifting, I’m learning a lot from the people around me. I don’t see it as me trying to be the best driver at this event or trying to be the number one person driving. That’s not really how I go into events. I go in wanting to learn from other people. I’m always asking people with the same car as me what they did with theirs. I’m learning a lot at events, rather than seeing other people as competition. So I think it helps me a lot with my cars, but maybe as I get better with driving and I go to bigger events I will see it like that. But as of now, I’m just trying to get as much information as I can from other people.

Is there a wide age range at those events?

I’ve seen all ages. I’ve seen 16-year-olds and guys that are 60 or 70 years old driving their drift cars. So I think it’s cool. I will say there are obviously not as many girls as I would like to see out there, but I do see some females out there, and it’s cool seeing them out there. There are families, kids, teenagers, young couples, and mostly 20 to 30-year-olds.

As you said, it is probably pretty macho. So I can imagine it’s weird showing up and it’s all dudes.

It is. Being in a male-dominated industry, you are kind of used to that. I think it’s cooler when I see a girl out there. I think, “Oh my gosh, I need to go talk to her immediately. I need to be her friend.” It was intimidating at first. But I think as I’ve gotten more comfortable and as I’ve gotten more support from women in the industry, it’s gotten easier. But it is cool seeing girls out there.

Do you get a sense of pride or anything like that from being one of the few out there, or is it a bummer?

I think it’s a mix of both. Very rarely are there no girls at an event. At my most recent events, I’ve had girls come up and talk to me and ask me questions, which is super cool and it feels great.

So I think when that doesn’t happen, it might be a bummer. But as of now, it’s cool having other girls come up and ask me questions. These two girls from my city came up to me asking about my setup, how I got into drifting, and if I went to a drift school. It was cool because I was able to provide them with answers that I was never really given. So I think it’s cool. I take pride in it. 

That’s awesome. Would you consider yourself a role model?

I would say so. There are a lot of other female drivers and drifters out there that are amazing, but at these smaller events, I feel like there are not as many. So it’s cool.

So talking about being supported. You’ve worked with a lot of cool brands. What’s your favorite part about working with Ruffles among some pretty awesome brands?

I love working with Ruffles because they’re allowing me to speak on a different aspect of the car community, and they’re allowing me to share my side of my story as a woman in a male-dominated industry. They’re allowing me to speak what I have to say, be prideful in what I have to say, and know that what I say matters in this industry. And I especially like working with Ruffles because they’re not part of the car industry. Ruffles acknowledging it, and that it’s a huge part of people’s lives, is amazing.

You’re also a great painter. Do you have any other hobbies or anything like that outside of cars? Do you find any crossover inspiration that eventually brings you back into cars?

So I love nature. I love going on hikes and road trips. I think road trips are kind of tied to cars for me. One of my cars is specifically for road-tripping or going to these drift and car events. It’s brought me to a ton of other places that I wouldn’t necessarily have thought of beforehand. Having a good car to bring me to those places has allowed me to merge my hobbies in that kind of way.

You also started getting into the bikes recently. What inspired that and how is it going?

I actually don’t have either of them right now. My dad and his side of the family were always on bikes or four-wheelers when I was growing up. So when I got to the age where I could finally not get yelled at by my mom and actually have a bike, I wanted to get one.

It was fun. I loved having it. I think with my current driving situation in my city, there’s a lot of construction and I did have a close call that was a little scary. Also, when I was working on bikes, I realized there’s not a lot you can do with them. I cleaned out a gas tank, which was an experience. But I learned that there are not a lot of customizable parts compared to a car. So I decided I liked cars more. I love bikes, they have been in my family forever, but cars have a special place in my heart, especially when working on them. I like having friends in my car and stuff like that. But I probably will get another bike in the future if I live in the countryside. But right now, it’s a little too scary.

Do you see yourself getting into any other kind of engine-based sports or vehicles?

Right now no. Maybe a four-wheeler in the future. I don’t know. My dad still has one right now, and I enjoy riding it, it’s a lot of fun.

What’s the longest you’ve ever worked on a car? And are you ever truly “done” with a car?

The longest project is currently the drift car. There are still things that are in the back of my head that I need to do on it but aren’t a priority. That’s two and a half years as of now. As long as I drive my cars, I’ll never truly be done because something is always going to break or I’m going to want to change it. It’s just basic maintenance. If I have a car in a museum or something crazy like that, I would say it’s the final version. But if I’m still driving my cars, I’ll probably have to do things to them. If it looks nice I’ll want to take it on a drive. 

Do you have a dream build and do you have any plans to actually make it a reality in the future?

So recently, I got my dream car from the last three years. I’m lucky and grateful to be able to work on it and have it in my garage right now. I want to make it look like it’s back in 1991 again, and have everything super clean and restored. So I would say that’s my current project and that was my dream car. For another dream car, I guess I can go crazy and say some exotic car or something like that. But I think my focus right now is on my current dream car. 

What was the process like in getting it?

So I searched online and on marketplace every day. I’m constantly searching, just in case I see something. And it popped up six hours away. I wasn’t sure, but it was such a good price that I was worried someone else would get it if I didn’t. I took the trip with one of my friends, and they helped me bring it back. I was so nervous the entire time on the way back, but the previous owner was sure it would make it back. I just trusted him that I wouldn’t have to tow it back. So after six hours, it came back flawlessly. It didn’t have any issues. It was even better that I had to drive so far to go get it, rather than going down the street. I think it created a deeper, core memory for me. 

I can imagine it’s like a scene in a movie, you’re driving back in the car and it’s finally happening.

It was crazy. I actually cried coming back because I had no idea that I was going to be getting this car anytime soon. When I was driving back, it was all country roads in the middle of nowhere in Texas. I kept thinking about how cool it was.

What makes a car special to you? Is it going to be the mechanics or the memories you make in it? What makes something like a dream car special?

I think it’s a little bit of both. I think memories are huge to me when it comes to a car. I like getting a car that has some problems. I like to get it to a point where the outside looks pretty good, I’m not too great with bodywork and painting cars. But I think the memories hold true whenever I’m able to say that I touched pretty much every single part of a car and I fixed it from the ground up. Memories are huge when it comes to that.

With a drift car, it almost seems like you’re not necessarily able to take it on a road trip or something like that. So is it a different kind of memory than a daily driver that you would take on a hiking trip?

The drift car is specifically for drifting. I don’t really drive it other than that because it has a welded dip and it has an angle kit, which makes it not optimal for parking and stuff like that. So I definitely have different memories when it comes to that.

It’s a different feeling. I would hate to say that the drift car is my favorite car because it’s like choosing my children. But it is because of the mornings when I wake up at 5:00 AM to go to a drift event, camp overnight, and have tires just shoved inside of it trying to get all my tools in one go. It definitely has different memories with it, but I think that’s what makes it special.

And then there’s also something kind of cool about having the outside a car look terrible, but the inside is high-performance.

Oh yeah, for sure. A sleeper build, where it’s just completely racked on the outside. That’s how a lot of drift cars are honestly. I have yet to tap doors or anything with anyone because I’m so scared of making the car look ugly. But that’s how all these drift cars are. You see them and they’re completely beaten up, but then you open the hood and it’s insane. But everyone needs a good performance car. Not so pretty on the outside, but running well.

It seems like it’s more accessible to get a car like that because then it’s going to be a little cheaper, to begin with.

Yeah, that’s how I got two of my cars because everyone else looked at them and didn’t want to mess with them. I got one of them from an auction. So I think it’s beneficial in some ways. But then sometimes you get smacked with a problem you’ve never seen before and you have no idea what to do with it. But it definitely helps.

What do you get excited about in someone else’s car when you’re at an event or a meetup? 

I think cars that are imported, so a right-hand drive, a Japanese car, or just cars that you don’t see that often. There’s a group of drift cars that are amazing for drifting and aren’t so expensive when putting parts in, and I feel like you see them every single time you go to a drift event. So seeing a special kind of car like a right-hand drive car or something that you wouldn’t typically see drifting is really cool. For instance, I saw a truck drifting at the last event I was at and it was definitely not my style, but it was super cool to witness in person. I think seeing something you wouldn’t see on the streets every day is cool.

So then on the opposite side of that, what’s a trend going on right now that you could absolutely live without?

Oh gosh I don’t want to hate on it. I would say there are some cheesy decals that people put on their cars or cheesy wraps, but I don’t know. Other than that maybe parts that aren’t practical but are more so for cosmetics. To each their own, I think everyone does what they want to do, and I think that’s the cool part about being able to customize your own car. 

You’re not rocking your Instagram on the window?

I feel like people that put their Instagram sticker in the window just have to drive really well. Because I’ve seen stuff where people DM them saying, “You drive like crap,” or, “Hey pull over.” So yeah, maybe an Instagram sticker.

It makes sense at an event, but then if you’re just in traffic anyone can look you up.

Oh yeah. I look them up every single time I see them. I want to see what they’re driving, who they are, and what’s on their page. But then if they’re driving badly I feel like they shouldn’t have put their Instagram on there. Now I know they’re a bad driver.

Does manual or automatic matter to you, and do you think you can be an enthusiast or be a part of the community if you’re driving an automatic?

Yes. I think that you can be an enthusiast if you drive an auto. I prefer a manual because it fits better with what I’m using the cars for. But I think that autos or manuals both have their pros and cons. Auto is scientifically faster than a manual. You can’t be faster than a computer. But manual, you get to feel like you’re one with the car.

So I think auto or manual differs depending on what you want the car for. And I think either fits in the car community just fine. I think they each have their reasons or uses. If you’re doing drag strip races, would you want to do that in a manual? Probably not.

Of course. What’s a go-to playlist when you’re driving? And does it vary from driving to the grocery store versus whipping around a track?

Yes. So I have a specific drift playlist. I couldn’t even tell you what kind of songs are on there. There’s old rock, there’s hip-hop, there’s some current pop. I guess it’s just whatever I felt when making that playlist at the time.

It definitely differs. I have a drift playlist that I have 30 songs or something on and I’ll just play it on a loop all day. And whoever I’m driving in the car with is like, “Oh my God, please change the playlist. I’ve heard this song five times.” Or when I’m just driving to the grocery store or wherever, I’ll sometimes have just the radio on, or I’ll have another playlist. I make a playlist once a month and that’s my month’s playlist. Once it gets old, I move on to the next. But the drift playlist stays consistent. It is always there for me.

What’s your guilty pleasure? The one thing that you would do in your garage or to your car that would never see the light of day?

I would probably say music. The thing is people have no idea how much I’m talking to myself as I’m making these videos. I definitely talk myself through the entire process. Not just so I can listen to it later to try to hear what I was doing at the time, but because it makes things click into my head better if I’m talking. So if you were to watch the unedited versions of my videos, I literally sound insane. There’s music playing in the background, and I’m just talking to myself working on my car. So maybe that’s my guilty pleasure. I probably would never let anyone see that.

That’s what people want to see though. We need to see the bloopers.

Maybe. I’ll have to do a little bloopers reel. But there’s a lot of frustration, happiness, anger, or just me yelling at the car. I probably sound insane. 

So is TikTok your full-time job or are you working anywhere else right now?

TikTok has just now become my full-time job. I was working at a performance shop for the past year. But then I opened up my garage. I’m kind of doing full-time content creation as of now. But I might get into another business in the future.

What’s the best part of content creation?

Literally just being able to have a creative space. If I want to switch it up and I want to do a different kind of video, I can have immediate feedback on whether people like something and want to see more of it. It’s also cool having a huge friend group that not only gives me direct support, but I can get help from as well. If I have a question about a car or anything really, I know I can just head over to my Instagram and ask it, and I’ll have a ton of knowledgeable people giving me the answer.

I think it’s cool being directly integrated with the community. But it’s also cool being able to put my artistic and creative side into my videos and kind of have them linked.

How is it being a young woman content creator in the car world?

I think that when I first started, I expected to get a lot of hate and judgment. But I’ve seen that a lot of people actually support and love what I’m doing. I think it’s cool being able to receive that feedback and inspire others.

I get comments all the time from girls or dads saying, “This is so cool to see. I want to start helping my daughter out more with learning about her car.” So I think it’s really inspirational having these people look up to me. And it’s something that I never saw coming. As I said, I thought that I was just going to be getting a ton of hate for working on cars and doing something I’m not supposed to be doing. I think it’s cool being able to have direct feedback from the support system that I have and to inspire all these other girls around the world. I get to look at their videos and watch what they’re doing.

And TikTok is great too, if there’s any hate, you’ll get 10 comments replying to it shutting it down.

They back me up so hard. Literally they got my back. I don’t know what I did to deserve that, but if anyone comments hate, you’re right. I get 10 people being like, “Actually you’re wrong. She’s cool. That’s not right.” So it is cool being able to see that.

You mentioned that Ruffles lets you say what you want to say and be yourself. Who is Lauryn, and what is the message that you’re trying to share as a female in the car community, working your way up the way you are?

I think as a person in the car community, I’m trying to share that you can truly do whatever you want to do in your life. I never intended on being in this position in my career this early on. Even though I’m not considered a professional in this industry, I can still get stuff done, and I can still share this info with other people and encourage them to do what they want to do with their lives. Now with TikTok, you can literally make a career doing whatever you want. I’m just trying to share the love, share the positivity, and allow people to do whatever they want to do.

That’s awesome. What are your plans for the future in terms of builds or your new garage?

When I was working at a performance shop, I never really got to focus on my cars and get them to where I wanted them to be. I definitely want to upgrade the drift car, and start going to more drift events, as well as car meets and events in my local area.

For right now, it’s really just figuring out a structure for producing better content and producing more tutorial-based videos. I really want to try to teach more. In a lot of my videos, I’m kind of just going through what I did, and I’m not necessarily teaching someone as if they were doing it themselves. I want them to watch my videos and fully finish a job. So my focus for right now is more tutorial-based videos and longer-style videos on YouTube. 

There’s no plan for content creators in terms of career. Is there a track that you follow as a car person and as a content creator? Is there a clear career path here or is it just figuring it out as you go?

I feel like I’m just figuring it out as I go. I think beforehand, I loved certain companies and I would have been so grateful and lucky to be able to work with those companies. And I’m starting to get on track to be able to have these amazing sponsorships and work with these car companies.

But I think I’m kind of just doing what I want to do as I go. There’s no direct plan. Content creation in this industry is so new that there’s no step-by-step plan to get to work with a company you like. It’s just kind of having fun and doing whatever I want to do. And if I could create a career out of that in the process, then I’m happy.

Do you have any final remarks? Any shout-outs? Anything you’ve been dying to say to the world?

Do what makes you happy in your car. Do what makes you happy and it doesn’t matter what anyone else says. As long as you’re content and happy with your build, then that is all that matters.