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When most professional basketball players retire, they don’t walk into a Subaru dealership and ask for a job as an apprentice mechanic. They also do not have a wide body Porsche 997 and BMW E30 Touring in their garage. Leo Lyons is different, as you will see in the this week’s episode of CARISMA on YouTube.
Getting paid to play basketball is a lifelong dream for many. For Leo, it was always a means to an end. German cars with JDM widebody kits may seem strange, but it all makes sense when you look at his life path: a tall guy who grew up in Kansas City, who was interested in cars and fashion, did not get expelled from college and a career in basketball in Japan, where the country’s love of outrageously wide sets hit him hard.
He has always talked publicly about his love of cars, hoping it would plant a seed for later when his playing days were over. Then a fan gave him a chance to visit RVB and hanging out with Akira Nakai, an opportunity that changed his life as much as basketball.
“Seeing him work and being around him and seeing people respect him to this day has always motivated me to want to do exactly what he does. It’s opening a store where I can do whatever I want. The meeting with him showed me that in such a world there is a place for me to be creative.”
Over the years, Leo continued to play, make connections, and earn enough to buy himself a Porsche 997, an Audi R8, a clean second-gen Subaru WRX STI, and a house in upstate New York to build this shop. He bought a Porsche hoping to install the RWB kit, but when Covid slowed the process, he went for the 935 style kit with old and new in Japan and never looked back.
Then, with a daughter on the way, he bought a BMW E30 Touring after seeing it on display in Larry Chen’s video. It was a custom build by Eric Penelow, co-founder of Live to Offend, a company that sells widebody hard kits for the E30, E36 and Mazda FD RX-7. In it, Eric explains that he built it as a fun family car for his two kids, keeping the M20 inline-six mostly stock except for upgraded studs and gaskets and a Precision 5858 turbo to keep it around 340 hp. He also made it clear that it was not for sale.
Leo was thrilled, and with his young daughter on the way, he found his father’s car. He contacted Eric through Larry and asked to be first in line if he ever changed his mind. Planting seeds again. A few months later, the wagon ended up in his garage.
A lot needs to be done to create this store, build his new identity and unite people and influencers from all over the world in his vision. (Hence the story of the Subaru dealer—he wants to learn as much as he can. And he knows that second act is unexpected for a man in his position. He’s spent most of his 37 years on this planet thinking about basketball, and he can just walk from all that and become Leo, the widescreen guy, pretty much?
“People get upset about how simple I am. Sometimes I just don’t want to do something I don’t like. I’ve been playing basketball for a long time, and once I don’t like it, what’s next?’ he says. “That’s what led me to the decisions I made, just throwing myself into cars.”
Let’s see what he will lead to, and we will root for him. Especially if he continues to do the crazy wide thing, which it looks like he will.
“Every time I collected Hot Wheels (growing up), I knew I was going to get this car, like I’m collecting this one because one day I’m going to get one. That’s where my theme comes from with the cars I actually buy, and it’s kind of a wider fuselage than I probably should have. This is because I want my cars to really look like Hot Wheels. So that’s my goal to try to create and make builds that make me feel like that kid again.”
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