Like many who follow car culture, I’ve been reading about the custom Porsche builds of Akira Nakai and his custom Japanese Porsche tuning company, Rauh Welt Begriff, for a few years now. At one time, I even replicated the famous Stella Artois design in Forza 4, but on a 993 instead of a 930, for various reasons. Though, for a long time, many of these cars were exclusively put together in Japan or some other far off location. This time however, Nakai san was traveling to Orlando, Florida, just 90 minutes from my home.
On Saturday, I drove out to a little bar called the “Spacebar” where the car was to be shown. The area was packed with people waiting to see the car. I didn’t see any RWB cars around, so I decided to check out a few of the cars parked around the bar.
Parked out front was this extremely shaved bright orange 964, dropped to the ground on Air Lift Performance air suspension. It also sported some of similar parts to what the new RWB 993 would later turn out to have installed, such as Rotiform wheels and a Renown steering wheel.
I asked about the build, but didn’t really get into specifics. The whole car went from stock to a finished custom in just three days. It was close to 100 degrees outside, during the meet, with high humidity. Tape was temporarily securing the canards (visible in these photos), because as RWB Orlando said in an Instagram post “Nakai said to leave the tape on to insure the canards hold.” From what other information I’ve found in RWB Orlando’s Instagram feed, this RWB transformation included:
- Titan Motorsports custom exhaust
- Mint green paint
- Color matched roll bar and brake calipers
- RWB fender extensions, bumpers, and wing
- Rotiform LSR wheels wrapped in Toyo Proxes R888 tires
- KW Variant 3 coilovers
- Rennline aluminum floorboard and adjustable pedals
- Renown handmade steering wheel
The paint job seemed to have been done a little earlier, but the cutting, attaching, and bolting everything on had to be quite a lot of work to do in just three days. Nakai claimed to not be tired, but I wouldn’t blame him if he were.
Kei Kishi is quite a creation to see. After years of seeing RWB cars on the internet, it was amazing to finally see the real thing in person and to meet the man behind the builds. I can only hope that we see more from him in the future on this side of the Pacific. Maybe a USA-based version of the Idler’s Games? I’m really only speculating. Only time will tell what’s next in store for RWB.
