“BZZZZZZZZ” a saw blared loudly in Porsche Santa Clarita‘s “Wünderground” car museum this past Saturday as hundreds of people breathed a combination of dust and cigarette smoke just to get a glimpse of a legend. Wearing Dr. Pepper pajama pants, drinking sodas, smoking Winstons, and oozing with swagger, that legend is Akira Nakai, a Japanese car customizer whose controversial “RWB” widebody cars have changed Porsche culture forever.
RWB stands for Rauh-Welt Begriff, which translates to “Rough World Concept,” an appropriate name for a tuner whose process is undeniably “rough,” especially in the context of precision engineering outfits like Singer, RUF, and Gunther. The company’s founder, Akira Nakai, does all the work by hand, transforming Porsches into widebody monsters using little more than a cutting saw, a belt sander, a tube of sealant, and an impact driver.
The final result is a piece of art, and the process itself is a genuine performance, luring in eyes from all over the West Coast. What is it that draws so many people in? I had a chance to interview one of the many faces standing in that huge crowd in Porsche Santa Clarita’s Wünderground.
“I had seen a post that they would have a viewing of Nakai doing his work on these two RWBs. And I’ve been kind of watching his work online for a while now and had been wanting to see him doing his work in person,” Bryan — who goes by Car.Leaper on Instagram — told me. “I never thought that that would happen…When I saw the opportunity, I had to show up.”
Our conversation was one of the few taking place as everyone else huddled behind ropes, watching in quiet awe as the master worked.
“His process, the way he does his measurements and his cuts by hand… it basically just lives up to exactly what I was expecting to see…[It’s fun to watch] because you get to see the transformation,” said Bryan. “You get to see kind of what goes into these builds. And the time it takes for him to do all these cuts and measurements that he does in order to get these body panels to fit.”
There’s been a lot of controversy about Nakai-san from Porsche fans who think cutting up original Porsches is blasphemy, but among the people at Porsche Santa Clarita, it seems there were only fans.
“He just kind of takes his time and does things almost eyeballed in a way. He takes measurements, but for the most part, he’s done this for so long that he kind of just almost freehands this…It’s pretty impressive,” added Bryan. “I feel like other people would take more time in making sure that these cuts are, you know, almost perfect in a way. I feel like he kind of makes the imperfections seem beautiful, and it kind of makes sense because I think that’s just kind of his style.”
Fans of the cars themselves, and fans of the performance, which Nakai-san has down to the tee thanks to an effortless style that makes him unique in the whole car universe.
To describe a bit of that style, here’s Griffin Riley, The Autopian’s Video Manager, who spent a lot of time around these two RWBs and around Nakai-san this past week at Porsche Santa Clarita.
Akira Nakai Is A One-Of-One Rockstar
This section is written by Griffin Riley
“If I see a single brown M&M in my bowl of oh so yummy candy-covered chocolates, I swear to the high heavens that I’m gonna smite the nearest stagehand I see,” – Eddie Van Halen, probably. Okay, maybe that’s not exactly how the conversation went, but it’s a classic story of a massive artist having seemingly absurd demands as a condition to do work for someone. Sure, Van Halen’s clause was motivated by safety, as the M&M line was hidden in between a series of technical specifications about rigging pyrotechnics at their show, and it’s said that the M&M thing was a test to see if the venue was paying attention. (Even if it did set a precedent for highly-specific “Riders”).
Nakai-san, like many of your favorite rockstars, has a list of demands for whenever he does work on someone’s Porsche: He wants essentially a bespoke living room (complete with a retro refrigerator filled with Mexican soda), snacks from his home country of Japan, a plush seat for just his dog to rest in, and lots of cigarettes.
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Yes, Nakai is that big of a name in the car world, and his demands, you could argue, are instruments that he uses to create a special performance/image that drew in so many people from around Southern California. Seriously: I met a dad and daughter who drove in from Sacramento at 2 AM just to see Nakai-san do his thing.
If you haven’t heard of him or the brand and are just looking for another reason to hate on something, here you go: He takes pretty little Porsches, cuts them up, and turns them into touge drift monsters that look more like they came from Ganymede than Stuttgart. A Porsche lover, I am not, a rockstar I am not, but I’ve seen him work in person now at Galpin’s Porsche Santa Clarita dealership, and man…this guy is sick.
He does what he does because he’s a drifter; in his younger years, he was a bit of a Takumi Fujiwara, if you will — a true Initial D guy. He started his drifting lifestyle in a Toyota Corolla AE86, just like the famous anime’s main character, carving up and down the prefectures, undoubtedly with more control and poise than we Angelenos have when we’re carving the canyons of Angeles Crest.
The AE86 is a bit of an unsuspecting IYKYK car to folks in the car world, but he, like so many other gearheads in the world, fell victim to the allure of Germany’s once attainable sports car, so when one rolled into his shop, he needed to pounce. From Yokogao Magazine:
“As the years rolled by, while the rest of Japan fixated on JDM cars, Nakai found his eye wandering off to European cars, especially Porsches. […] Then, one fateful day, a battered Porsche 930 rolled into his shop. Instead of repairing it, Nakai made the decision to purchase it from the owner. The 930 became Nakai’s first and most cherished Porsche, granting him the freedom to push the boundaries of customization beyond the limits of AE86s, pioneering body widening modifications that would set the stage for his legacy.”
With a Porsche in his possession, Nakai-san proceeded to do all the track-focused modifications one could dream of, deleting any weight he could, lowering the car, adding carbon fiber where possible, optimizing brakes and suspension. While that’s all pretty normal treatment to a wannabe and professional racer alike, he took things a step further with the car, and set the stage for RWB’s design language going forward: He built fenders a mile wide and a spoiler that reached for the stars.
I like Nakai-san’s aggressive wide body styling, but there’s no shortage of people who don’t. Reddit user u/New_Inside3001 has a more measured criticism, saying, “To be brutally honest, the quality of his craftsmanship is highly debatable. As in, it’s still phenomenally good considering how raw the cutting and gluing approach is, but it’s still a raw and unsophisticated way of modifying what essentially are extremely rare and expensive cars.”
While Porsches are far from rare in Southern California, they certainly aren’t cheap, and the body kit isn’t cheap either. That fiberglass Nakai is screwing to your car — it’s well into the five-figures. And that’s before we get to the whole rockstar thing that I mentioned above.
Every RWB kit is personally installed by Nakai himself, so that alone is worth the cost of the kit for most people. And with the man coming all the way from Japan to tear your car apart, you gotta take care of him, and that includes a long list of requests, almost Van Halen-style.
Walking into Porsche Santa Clarita’s basement, I saw a pop-up living room setup next to their Wunderground museum, where Nakai takes his prolific smoke breaks every few minutes. Knowing Galpin’s style, I initially figured it was just the team wanting to go above and beyond in creating an ambiance for Nakai to work in. After chatting with PSC’s own David Osorio about the whole thing, I learned about a document filled with all of Nakai’s demands; it was nearly 20 pages long!
The list is littered with hyper-specific tools, Japanese snacks, accommodations for his dog, room and board; just truly an wild amount of stuff. And like any good rockstar through the eras, there appears to a confidence in his own work that borders on apathy, as the man does everything by the seat of his pants.
The first day I saw him in the ring, he was cutting up a 997 (which seemed like they’re floating around the mid-30s-40s price-wise) for a body kit that starts at $31,000 on the low end. Add the costs of room and board and food and furniture, and Nakai-san cuts your car with RECKLESS ABANDON. Or at least, that’s how some people on Reddit see it.
If you ask me, his confidence in his art reminds me of a rock band that purposefully masters its tracks to be mindlessly loud and distorted. And I’m not ashamed to admit how much I admire those tunes that make my ears bleed, just as I admire how well Nakai-san cuts up these Porsches.
He is a one-of-one rockstar.
It’s clear Autopian cofounder Beau — who commissioned these two builds (and actually got to do some cutting on his 964 Cabrio!) — thinks so, too.
Both those colors are f’n awesome and I don’t even usually like the pale pinks. Living in the Northeast, the idea of the exposed points for corrosion from the cuts make my eyes twitch, but they’re not my cars and they’re not spending their time driving in winter conditions, anyway.
Porsche has to have one of the most annoying fanbases. Friggin’ 911s are not precious, they made tons of the stupid things and IDGAF how many they only made on Mondays in May with the ashtray delete package (yeah, that’s right, Porschephiles, you’re no better than a New Balance Corvette owner), it’s the same damn thing as the others with some overrated engine differences and similar. Moreover, these “fans” hobble a company whose namesake was into mechanical diversity, innovation (a f’n AWD hybrid with 4-wheel brakes around 1900!), and not looking back, pushing Porsche to be stuck reheating the ancient 911, itself derived from a damn prewar design, torturing its lines to fit the requirements of a modern car and even sticking its styling on SUVs that end up looking like a beached 911 whale carcass bloating in the sun and waiting to explode. Like Harley Davidson, they’re unable to move on for fear of loss of their traditional fanbase while failing to attract enough new people. Good for this guy if for no other reason than he’s figuratively poking Porschephiles with a sharp stick!
Not really sure what my opinion is on RWB cars. I’m not really a Porsche guy so I’m not crying about cutting one up, and the actual style isn’t my thing either, but they are certainly attention getting.
Earlier this year my Lemons racer was on display at a Euro car show when an RWB Porsche parked next to it and I was a little nervous about the juxtaposition. I joked to a friend “At least I know both of these cars were built with the same level of craftsmanship!” He responded “At least one of these cars has actually seen a race track!”
Pajama pants, slides and no safety glasses. This guy is a bozo.
He’s not. He’s a true artist.
Two things can be true.
Not that different to my uncle and many of the old-school car builders out here, except change the pajama pants for footy shorts and the footwear for thongs (flip flops).
The quality of the work is the goal, fashion and safety are a distant thought.
Somewhere I have a fridge magnet from a friend that says:
“Safety Third!”.