The Porsche he wanted was not sold in the United States, so he built one.

Eric Pasia, 42, Phoenix-based management consultant and founder of Last Era, a motorsport-inspired clothing brand, about his tribute to the 1995 Porsche 911 Carrera RS, told to AJ Baime.

When I was young, my mom said to me, “Hey, did you know your birthday is the same as Mario Andretti’s?” I didn’t know who it was, so I went to find out. I quickly became fascinated with him and with motorsport. All my childhood I followed racing and the Andretti family, and I was really interested in cars and car modification. In high school and college, I started buying Japanese cars that I could afford and modifying them.

When I got my first job I could afford my first real sports car, a 1999 BMW M3. Then I got a 2001 BMW M3 and then a BMW M5. Eventually I decided to switch to Porsche in the early 2000s. I bought a 2002 911 Turbo and started to explore the platform and history of Porsche. That’s when I started hearing a lot about air-cooled Porsches.

There is a whole line of fantastic Porsches everyone is talking about, driven by air-cooled engines, before the company switched to water-cooled engines, in the late 1990s. So many people have told me that I had to own an air-cooled Porsche to really experience what it was to be a Porsche enthusiast.