Thirty-one-year-old Brian Scotto came of age inhaling the detritus of New York Hardcore and reveling in the city’s fertile hip-hop scene. He’s also been friends with WRC driver Ken Block for years. The pair ran an STI together in the 2006 One Lap of America, and when Block needed a point man to run PR for his WRC team, Scotto was a natural pick. Now the two have embarked on a new venture together, called Hooonigan. And in an attempt to illustrate that the brand isn’t just about Ford and rally cars, they teamed up with Akira Nakai to customize Scotto’s 1991 911 Turbo.
In the past couple of years, Nakai-san’s Rauh-Welt Begriff (literally “rough-world concept”) 911s have gone from in-the-know whisper cult status to commanding respect and lustworthy drools from Porschephiles and tuner kids alike. Scotto’s always been a cat excited by new forms—the man was at the vanguard of the hi-riser movement—but he’s always wanted a Porsche. More specifically, a white 964 turbo with a Lobster Red interior, a classic case of the-car-one-drooled-over-as-a-kid made flesh. Meanwhile, he’d been as captivated as anyone with RWB’s cars during his stint at 0-60 Magazine.
While Scotto was in the early stages of planning Hoonigan with Block, Nakai was talking to marketing impresario Mark Arcenal of Fatlace about launching a U.S. arm. The two sides came to an agreement, and over four days last month, Nakai flew from Japan to California to work his magic on Scotto’s Andial-tuned Turbo alongside Arcenal’s 964 Carrera 4. The Hoonigan likens watching Nakai’s first slice into the 911’s fender as the closest he’s come yet to feeling like a father watching childbirth, referring to the experience as “brutal.”
The result of all this diligent butchery? A car that sits an inch and a half lower on its springs, with the fender radiuses tweaked to accommodate the drop. Scotto opted for RWB’s race-style bolt-on fender extensions, which Nakai-san spent hours massaging for the perfect placement. The Nimitz-wide humpty stance was achieved using a set of custom Fifteen52 wheels wearing Pirelli P Zero rubber. The front 18x11s are shod with 265/40s, while the 18×12 rears wear gargantuan 315/30s. Scotto left the engine alone, saying, “I didn’t want to have a car that was torn apart six ways ‘til Sunday and then have to shake everything down.”
Especially since he planned to drive the car 850 miles to the SEMA show in Las Vegas for the offical launch of the Hoonigan brand. The car handled the two-day blast without a hitch, although with its heater solenoid broken, he resorted to duct-taping the vents shut for a bit of a respite from the heat. According to Scotto, Nakai aligned the car by eye and “it tracks totally straight at 110, hands off the wheel. You hit a bump and it feels like, say, a GT3.” It’s a far cry from the stiffer-is-better setup the car had when he bought it, despite the bosozoku-meets-IMSA lowdown look.
The craziest thing Scotto had to contend with during the trip was the downforce generated by the Nakai-selected rear wing. “Out in the desert, we were on a two-lane road when a truck went by coming the other way at about 90. It felt like somebody pulled the handbrake.”
“Rough world” indeed.
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