Greg Mathews is archiving Drift Tengoku, a Japanese magazine dedicated to drifting that published from April 1996 until February 2024. Mathews subscribed while the magazine ran and has collected around 400 issues through purchases and Yahoo Auctions Japan. He is digitizing and translating them into English using optical character recognition technology.
Mathews refined his scanning process over time. He initially used a typical office scanner that took about two hours per issue. He now uses a Sony A6300 camera paired with an app he built that triggers photos when it detects no movement in front of the camera. The app allows him to work faster.
All scanned issues are available on driftmagarchive.com, which Mathews hosts on a personal web server for about $5 per month. The Internet Archive has offered to host the collection through volunteers after one of Mathews' TikToks caught an employee's attention.
Mathews owns two Nissan S13 240SXs and is part of the Good Luck League crew. He also runs Flock Manufacturing, which makes customizable gauges. The scanning project costs him money rather than generating revenue, but he continues out of passion for car culture.