About ten, twelve years ago, barely a day went by without an ultra-wide, air-cooled Rauh Welt Begriff (RWB) Porsche flooding social media channels and tuning blogs. The RWB hype train picked up serious speed, and more than one scene magazine was already writing up wide-body builds as the next big revival.

In the meantime, things got a little quieter around Rauh Welt Begriff in the mainstream – though the odd RWB car still turned up at the Essen Motor Show and Tuning World Bodensee. Yet a good ten years on, the ultra-wide RWB Porsches have lost none of their fascination. Because what makes Rauh Welt Begriff special isn’t the air-cooled Porsche 911s themselves – it’s the lifestyle behind them.

We’ve featured the odd RWB Porsche on our social media channels and on the KW automotive Blog before. And barely a week goes by without me exchanging messages with someone from the RWB community. But that’s a different story.

The red Porsche belongs to Romanian Cosmin Iordache. For almost 20 years, our dealer partner from Bucharest dreamed of owning his very own Rauh Welt Begriff – and in late December 2025, that dream finally came true. His RWB Porsche was born, and its name is Iroha.

As a young boy, Cosmin found everything car-related cool. It was only natural, then, that his own car would have to be something truly special. “I was channel surfing and landed on MTV’s Pimp My Ride,” the car enthusiast recalls. “That was my first encounter with chrome wheels – and I absolutely had to have them.” The problem: he couldn’t find them anywhere in Romania. So he took the leap and opened a small wheel shop as a side business.

“Over the years it grew and grew, I went fully independent and started importing alloy wheels, exhausts, body kits and suspension.” Today, Cosmin runs Custom Wheels, Custom Wrap and Custom Tuning – one of the largest and most successful tuning shops in all of Romania.

His company has already pulled off some extraordinary projects. Last year, for instance, they built the first and only Novitec N‑Largo in South-Eastern Europe – one of just 15 ever made – fitted, of course, with a KW Novitec suspension.

Cosmin is never idle. About ten years ago he also founded Custom Cars GT, which gave rise to Custom Cars Society. Together with his customers he doesn’t just cruise around Romania – they’ve toured North Africa in a BMW X3M with a KW coilover, or driven a lowered Lamborghini Huracán all the way from Bucharest up to Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, to the “Santa Claus Village”.

The spirit of RWB

Whether Cosmin will ever cruise his RWB all the way to Lapland, he isn’t quite sure yet. For now, he’s just overjoyed to finally be driving one. Why? Because not just anyone can order a Rauh Welt Begriff body kit and convert their Porsche 911. That would be too easy. Shall we explain? Gladly.

A Porsche is a Porsche, until High Priest of Custom Porsches and Wide-Body Samurai Akira Nakai gets his hands on it. Then it becomes something else entirely. A Rauh Welt Begriff. And that’s exactly where the story gets interesting. Because the Japanese builder doesn’t sell his body kits to just anyone with the necessary cash. His business model is something else entirely, and that’s precisely what makes it so unique.

Akira Nakai is no ordinary show-and-shine tuner. The man from Greater Tokyo has a tuning background that explains just about everything RWB stands for today. Before he ever touched a Porsche, he was part of “Rough World”, a street drifting crew that in the early nineties claimed the mountain roads around Tsukuba as their private race track, driving Toyota AE86s and other JDM Legends.

Anyone who was there, knows the scene, or used to pick up old Japanese Option Auto magazines at the station newsstand knows exactly what that means. Compared to this, The Fast and the Furious franchise is basically Disneyland. The Rough World drifters spent every spare minute they could on the Tsukuba mountain roads, working on their drift angle.

As a mechanic, Akira Nakai didn’t just keep his own AE86 running – he worked on plenty of customer cars too. In the mid-nineties, a crashed Porsche ended up on his lift, and that was it. The air-cooled 911 never let him go. He had to have one.

Eventually, Akira managed to scrape together the cash, picked up a rather worn-out Porsche 911 Turbo (930), and began transforming it to his liking: massively flared fenders, custom skirts, and a rear wing drawing from Group 5 racing aesthetics, all with his signature raw look where body panels literally get shaved away in the process.

If you want to drive a Rauh Welt Begriff yourself, put simply, you need to be liked by the tight-knit RWB community and by Akira Nakai personally. Only then do you get a chance to drive one. Cosmin made it.

But it isn’t the exclusivity that makes Rauh Welt Begriff so special. It’s more that Akira Nakai flies around the world to build each Porsche 911 on-site, with his own hands. In December, he flew to our KW dealer partner Cosmin Iordache in Bucharest.

Welcome, Iroha

“My Porsche is a 964 that I imported from Japan,” says Cosmin – who, a few days before the build on 20 December 2025, also became a father.

Many people argue about what the spirit of RWB really is. Akira Nakai couldn’t care less. And so the chain-smoking High Priest of Custom Porsches and Wide-Body Samurai will keep freehanding Porsche bodywork for years to come. Over time he has developed a precision that makes it a pleasure to watch every time. In many ways, it has become performance art.

It’s no surprise, then, that each two-to-three-day build is a show in itself. There’s always an audience on hand – and while some are almost moved to tears as the angle grinder meets Porsche sheet metal, others cheer the RWB founder on all the more. After a series of cuts and adjustments, Akira Nakai settles into an armchair, lights up a cigarette, and contemplates which next move will give the Porsche bodywork its own particular character.

What’s easy to miss in photos is just how wide these RWB Porsches actually are. The stock Porsche 911 (964), depending on specification, ran wheels between 6 x 16-inch with 205/55R16 tyres (front) and 8 x 16-inch with 225/50R16 (rear) or 7 x 18-inch with 205/45R18 (front) and 9.5 x 18-inch with 265/35R18 (rear). On Iroha, the dimensions are something else altogether.

Up front, it’s 10.5 x 18-inch ET-5 wheels with Michelin tyres in 265/35R18. Out back, things get even more extreme: the forged wheels from Cosmin’s own wheel label Custom Wheels Forged measure a massive 13 x 18-inch ET-78, wrapped in 315/30R18 rubber. Cosmin had originally wanted 335/30R18 tyres on the rear axle, but couldn’t find Michelin in that size.

What’s beautiful about every RWB Porsche is that they only look the same at first glance. Every RWB is a one-of-a-kind. That’s why Akira Nakai gives each of his builds a name. He named Cosmin’s RWB: Iroha.

“This name comes from the famous Japanese Iroha poem, which uses every character of Classical Japanese exactly once. Its poetic meaning reflects the idea that the world is transient and nothing lasts forever – a concept closely tied to Buddhist philosophy. In modern usage, ‘Iroha’ can also refer to the basics of something, the beginning, the foundation, or its very essence.”

Cosmin is convinced that Akira Nakai found the perfect name for his 911: “It’s a clean project, built with great respect for the RWB brand and the philosophy behind it. Beyond that, it holds a very personal meaning for me. Just three days before the car arrived at my workshop, my son was born. That’s why I felt this project symbolised a new beginning in my life.”

For the suspension, our dealer partner had only one option in mind: a KW suspensions coilover. Cosmin chose the KW V3 Klassik coilover for his 964 – adjustable in both compression and rebound damping – and added a hydraulic lift system on the front axle.

What makes the KW V3 Klassik and every KW V3 coilover in our Street Performance range truly special isn’t the stainless steel damper housings, but the damper design with our multi-valve technology. It allows the Lowspeed compression and Lowspeed rebound stages to be set independently, enabling fine-tuning that satisfies even the most demanding drivers. Thanks to the combination of adjustable Lowspeed valves with fixed Highspeed valves, the KW V3 Klassik delivers sporty handling alongside genuine everyday comfort.

The Lowspeed compression is adjusted over twelve clicks, while the Lowspeed rebound offers a range of sixteen clicks. The suspension ships already set to our recommended base setup. The compression stage determines how firmly the suspension responds to bumps and road imperfections. In other words, how direct and sporty Iroha feels to drive. A stiffer compression setting delivers more precise handling; a softer one gives more ride comfort.

The adjustable rebound valve, on the other hand, controls how quickly the car settles after a bump. A firmer rebound improves handling but can make the ride feel less forgiving. A softer setting brings more comfort, but can take a little edge off the handling.

Our KW HLS (Hydraulic Lift System) is available either as the HLS 2 for the front axle or the HLS 4 for both axles. It features hydraulic lift cylinders that raise the body up to 45 mm on demand with a simple button press.
The cylinders are installed between the spring perch and the main coil spring. Unlike air-bag systems, the KW HLS is far more compact and crucially, the spring rate doesn’t change whether the front is raised or sitting at ride height.

Up to around 80 km/h, the RWB Porsche can be raised at the front axle while driving – handy for steep car park ramps or speed bumps in traffic-calmed zones that might otherwise get a little too close to the RWB front splitter.

In Cosmin’s eyes, Iroha is now perfect – even if the search for slightly wider rear tyres may not be entirely over. His RWB simply shows that with our bespoke suspension solutions, we can meet any customer’s needs.

Images RWB Romania