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The MkIII Supra is quite heavy and it is a reasonably long car but it will drift quite well. The length of the car increases polar moment of inertia so the car doesn't experience snap oversteer the way some other cars, like the Miata and MR2 sometimes do. Just make sure you tune the suspension properly. Also, if your friend tunes it to produce hp in the 400-450 range, it's a lot of fun to drift. But turbo sizing is critical. Have to make sure that there is minimal lag, because the weight of the car means poor acceleration off boost.
There are also quite a lot of things that can be done to lighten the car substantially. The first and best to lighten the car is definitely the wheels. Get good light forged alloys. The difference in handling, acceleration and braking are remarkable. An aftermarket exhaust will free up the airflow for more power and also reduce weight. (Stock exhaust is a little heavy). Carbon fiber hood will reduce more weight in the critical front area, so will an aluminum radiator. Get a good front strut brace. It can help improve turn in.
As for the AE86, it's a drift classic because it's lightweight, RWD and most importantly, well balanced. Due to the weight, and its F/R balance and also the steering linkage, caster, etc. it has excellent neutral drift characteristics. If you've ever seen Initial D stage 1, yes, it's possible to do what Bunta did with some careful tuning of the handling, i.e. take your hands off the wheel in the middle of a drift and control it with the gas pedal. In Japan, before Initial D came out, most Japanese kids looked down on the AE86 because of the NA engine's limitation of about 160 hp. They considered it a car for wannabe's to 'play' at drifting. In other words, they acknowledged that it handles and drifts quite well but have no respect for its lack of power.
Experienced and professional drivers on the other hand were quite well aware of its excellent handling characteristics and the fact that the car can help you hone your drift skills in part because the engine isn't very powerful. If you don't drift properly, you might very well bog the engine down, which will make your acceleration out of the corner slow as crap. A car with more horsepower though, will allow the driver to pull themselves out of sticky situations with sheer power alone. This is of course a good thing, especially when you start drifting at very high speeds, but it can reduce a persons skill when they rely on it too much instead of perfecting turn in, weight shift, angle and throttle balance. Of course, after Inital D, the AE86 became an instant cult classic.
An AWD high hp car is the ultimate drift car simply because of physics. The AWD allows you better control of force/thrust vectoring, but a high hp AWD car is not the ideal car to learn to drift in. The AE86 is much better for that purpose. Very good handling and neutral in the drift, but it punishes you for mistakes because you don't have the extra power or traction of AWD to pull you out of any big screw ups. And you'll notice the small mistakes easier, because they will have a more noticeable effect on speed, especially exit speed, whereas the added power and traction of a turbo 4wd can be used to compensate for sloppy technique. So my recommendation would be, develop your drifting skills in the AE86, then get a 4wd turbo to leave everyone else in the dust. Hopefully, the morons at Mitsubishi will see the light and eventually bring in the full-blown Evo as opposed to this disguised Eclipse GSX they call the Evo VIII.
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