I realise this is digging up skeletons but:
Drifting:
Slipstream you have just described one form of drifting. Rear wheel drift, it is however possible to drift in a front wheel drive by engaging in power-on understeer. That is to break traction with the front wheels and control the slide with steering and throttle control.
Finally true drift is a term used to describe when you are in 'neutral-steer' that is you have no traction. The reason this is the holy grail of drifting is three-fold, it is the hardest to enable mechanically, it is the hardest to control and it is the point at which all tyres are working their hardest they literally have nothing left to give.
The method you use to achieve drift is hardly the best, ideally you want to minimise strain on the drivetrain, clutch popping maximises this. It is mechanically better to use power, or judicous brake applications to induce it. And a very good short cut is a drift suspension set up.
Oh and the final pic you posted is a very bad fake, it pretty much comes up at the top of the list when you google drift....
Demandred: Yes drifting can be faster. If you are for instance racing on a tight track overtseer is useful as it enables you to turn tigher at any given speed and thus raise your cornering speed. Whereas if you are on a nice open (fast) track then understeer enables you to carry more speed. Finally in an area like rallying it is the only way to round corners at much more than walking speed.
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Getting back to the more recent:
VTEC is as glossed over largely to do with cams. Basically you want the intake and exhaust valves to be open for different lengths of time in normal driving to race driving. Most production cars come with tame evryday cams that are nice and efficient for evryday driving. It is of course possible to fit racing cams however these hurt fuel consumption, idling and low speed power.
So enter Honda with some pretty trick engineering, I won't go into the techincals but at low revs a VTEC head (eg cams, valves etc) behaves nicely like a good day to day driver but once you're in the high revs the cam positioning changes so it's like you suddenly have racing cams. This basically means you get power down low and a nice daily driver but when you want it you ahve loads of power up high.
The turbo comparison comes from the moment that the cam positioning changes and the configuration goes from shopping trolley to race.
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Turbo versus supercharger:
Firstly the full name of a turbo is a turbosupercharger. This reflects how similar they are, they basically do the same thing that is cram more air into the combustion chamber as when there's more air you can burn more fuel and go faster.
The difference lies in how they are driven. A supercharger is driven by a belt from the engine, so the faster the engine goes the fatser the supercharger goes the more air it pumps etc etc. Whereas a turbocharger routs exhuast gases from the engine using these to spin a turbine which via a shaft spins a seperate turbine which pumps air.
From an engineering standpoint a turbo is preferable because it is a much better design utilising waste from the engine and not sapping its power. In that an engine has to work to run a supercharger but not a turbo.
However this drive difference is the source of their different characteristics, as the supercharger is spinning away from idle it provides better low down power whereas the turbo needs lots of exhaust gases to get it pumping. Which translates into high revs. Which is basically the story of turbo lag, a turbo needs time to get spinning fast enough.
There are a couple of ways to get around this, lighter turbines in the turbo which are thus easier to spin so spool up quicker. Better, ball bearings which provide less friction so it can spin up quicker. And of course two turbos a small one that spins up quickly and a bigger one that takes longer to spin up. So the small one provides boost from low revs and the big one from high revs.
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As far as the boat car thing:
'Drag boats' for want of a better term. Use car engines typically blown V8's. A freind of mine races a 6L Twin-turbo v8.
The reason for this is the demographic who race boats eg bogans not wogs (you wont see many RB26 boats out). The cost, it is easy to pick up a cheap old 308 etc and run it than pay $10K for a half cut etc etc. Finally the v8s in question are very low tech so they are easier to work on in the backyard.
