Countdown to SEMA: Taking a Look Back at ENEOS Booth Cars, Part 1

The clock is ticking and ENEOS is preparing to celebrate its biggest year at the SEMA Show!

For 2019, we’re breaking out something very special with Super Street Magazine: the debut of its A90 Toyota Supra project car. And as the SS crew finalizes preparations with Evasive Motorsports, we thought it’d be fun to take a look back at previous booth cars over the years, counting down to the Supra.

In 2014 we had an unusually cool guest: a VW Beetle R owned by rallycross driver, drifter and all-around bad-ass driver, Tanner Foust. It had been outfitted with a very special one-off Rauh Welt Begriff (RWB) widebody kit, which extended the width of the vehicle by 8” while flowing seamlessly with the original body lines. “I love the stylistic cues you see from tuners in Japan,” Foust explained at the time. “I thought it would be interesting to mix it with Volkswagen’s engineering and see what the results would be.”

For RWB’s Akira Nakai, it was a chance to take on something different than the work he typically provides for air-cooled Porsche 911s, and required him to think outside the box. However, he didn’t have to go too far. “Many Porsche owners like the Beetle, and it looks a little bit like a Porsche,” he said. “Despite its similarities, the Beetle isn’t a Porsche, so I had to make a completely new design for it.” Together with designer Jon Sibal, Nakai crafted a new front spoiler, custom canards, smoked headlights and applied Porsche GT3 RS orange paint in addition to the one-off widebody conversion.

The Beetle R was built at LTMotorwerks as a collaborative effort between the Los Angeles-based body shop and Nakai (who uses their facility to build his Porsche 911 customer projects). Foust also had custom-made 18×10” and 18×12” Motegi Racing Traklite wheels with a stepped lip, VW R-Line accessories and Recaro Sportster CS leather seats installed to compliment the car’s stunning new exterior.

Stay tuned for more features as we continue the ENEOS 2019 Countdown to SEMA!

Photos: Larry Chen/Speedhunters; Driving Line