Rough World Concept

This is a story about how one mans passion grew into a new dimension in Porsche culture. A relatively archaic custom bodyshop now creates some of the most iconic air cooled 911s out on the streets.

- Raj Hunjan

RAUH-Welt BEGRIFF (RWB) was founded by Akira Nakai, known simply as Nakaisan. His first project 911 was his very own car, a 930 Turbo that he wanted to transform into a race car, with style. He named the build after his favourite after work refreshment, Stella Artois. His workshop looks more like a shrine with memorabilia, car parts, old slot machines and other trinkets scattered all over it, stacks of empty Stella bottles adorn the walls too. If there was a definition of underground car builds, this would be it.

Whilst Nakai-San and his creations were well known in car circles in Japan, it took a four minute video uploaded to YouTube in August 2011 for the rest of the planet to wake up to the Rough World Concept, including myself. The video was filmed mostly in Nakia-san's workshop while he was completing a build for a customer. It eloquently showed what RWB represented, race car dynamics for the road, custom built to order. Each of Nakai-san's creations gets a name, which he claims just comes to him, during the build. He doesn't think about it, something inspires the name, whether it is the owners favourite roads, something else in their life they love or purely a word exchanged in passing.