Hammond’s Porsche gets anime wrap

Richard Hammond posting a Porsche 911 GT3 RS covered in anime art sounds like a joke someone made in a group chat. But it was real, and that’s why it blew up. On May 3, Hammond uploaded a short clip of himself driving a GT3 RS wrapped in Azur Lane character art — specifically Taihou — and the clip spread fast across car, anime, and meme accounts. ### What actually showed up? The car was a Porsche 911 GT3 RS wearing a full itasha-style wrap. That means a vinyl livery built around anime characters rather than racing sponsors or factory graphics. In this case the character was Taihou from Azur Lane, the ship-girl mobile game that turns warships into stylized anime characters. Hammond even called it “china style” in the clip, which helped kick off a second wave of comments from fans explaining that Azur Lane is a Chinese-developed game with a huge Japanese-style fandom culture around it. ### Why did people care so much? Because Hammond is basically legacy car culture in human form. He’s still one of the most recognizable TV car presenters of the last 20 years, first from Top Gear and then The Grand Tour. Seeing that guy — not a streamer, not a drift YouTuber, not a convention regular — rolling around in a loud, track-focused Porsche covered in anime art felt like two internet tribes crashing into each other at speed. ### What’s an itasha, exactly? Itasha is the Japanese term people use for cars decorated with anime, manga, or game characters. The literal joke behind the word is that the car is “painful” — painful on the eyes, painful on the wallet, or both. But that old punchline doesn’t really fit anymore. What used to read like niche convention culture now shows up on serious builds, race cars, and expensive street cars. Hammond’s GT3 RS didn’t create that shift — it just made a lot more people notice it. ### Why a GT3 RS matters here A 911 GT3 RS is not some disposable canvas. It’s one of Porsche’s most focused road cars — big aero, track-first setup, expensive enough that plenty of owners treat them like museum pieces. Wrapping one in Taihou art lands differently from wrapping a beater hatchback. That contrast is the whole bit. It takes a car that usually signals purity, seriousness, and old-school enthusiast status, then drops it straight into fandom culture with zero apology. ### Is this actually new in racing? Not really — that’s the part longtime anime fans found funny. Anime liveries have been in motorsport for years, especially in Japan. The wider car world just tends to rediscover them every time one breaks containment and hits a mainstream audience. That’s what happened here. Hammond gave the format a familiar face, and suddenly people who never think about itasha were arguing about whether it was sacrilege, brilliant, or somehow both. ### Why did this spread beyond car people? Because the image is instantly legible. You don’t need to know Porsche trim levels or gacha lore to get the joke. Famous car guy. Serious car. Giant anime woman on the doors. That’s enough. Then the internet does what it always does — quote-posts, reaction memes, and a lot of “I hate that I love this” energy. Dexerto and Yahoo both picked it up almost immediately, which tells you it escaped enthusiast circles fast. ### So what’s the real story? It’s not that Richard Hammond discovered anime wraps. It’s that a very mainstream ambassador for old-school petrolhead taste wandered into a style that younger internet car culture already treats as normal. That mix is why the clip traveled. Basically, the car wasn’t just a car. It was a culture-collision machine. The bottom line is simple — Hammond’s Porsche went viral because it made two scenes that usually talk past each other share the same image for a day. And turns out, a GT3 RS with Taihou on it is enough to do that.