Nearly four decades in, Better Bodies is everywhere the Porsche community is — Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, the Saturday morning meets. Customers tag us from Tokyo to Texas, and the same lips, skirts and wings we pour in Orange County show up on 911s we will never see in person. We still answer the phone like a family shop, because we still are one. Here's to the next forty.

Diego Lopez, Armando's son, takes the wheel. He grew up sweeping the shop floor and sanding moulds after school, and he drives a 991.1 Carrera wearing our own parts. Young, loud about it, and impatient to move the brand forward — new photography, a new website, a fitment tool that tells you in one click whether a part fits your exact car. Same moulds, same polyurethane, new energy.

We moved into our new headquarters in Orange County, California — more floor space for moulds, more room to pour, and a proper showroom for customers who want to see a lip on a bumper before they buy. We still hold one of the largest inventories of polyurethane Porsche aero in the world, which means most orders ship from stock instead of a waiting list.

2020 should have been quiet. Instead it was one of our biggest years ever. With the world parked at home, Porsche owners finally had time for the projects they'd been putting off, and our inbox filled with build photos from garages everywhere. We kept the shop running, shipped every day, and watched the community lift each other — and us — through it.

By 2018 the catalog finally covered everything we'd promised ourselves: 911, 930, 964, 993, 996, 997, 991 and the 986 Boxster, every piece in polyurethane. We rebuilt the online store around it so a customer could shop by their own car instead of hunting through part numbers. The order board hit records we had never seen.

We made it official: every polyurethane part we sell carries a lifetime warranty against cracking. Nine years of parts in the field had proven what we already knew — the material simply does not fail the way fiberglass does. Putting it in writing changed how customers bought from us.

The 991 arrived and we went straight to the front bumper. The 991 front lip and rear diffuser we developed that year became some of the most recognised pieces on the platform — the parts you see on a 991 at a meet and already know who made them. They are still two of our best sellers.

By 2010 Better Bodies parts had been shipped to every corner of the world, and the orders kept coming from places we had to look up on a map. Three years after switching to polyurethane we were sitting on the largest inventory of poly Porsche parts on the planet — and we still are today.

This is the year Better Bodies as you know it starts. We had spent two decades fitting fiberglass aero that looked right on the bench and cracked on the first driveway, the first speed bump, the first winter. In 2007 we poured our first polyurethane front lip — a material that flexes, takes a hit and springs back, and holds the factory bumper line without cutting a thing. It changed what we were willing to put our name on. Every lip, skirt, wing and diffuser we make today traces back to that first mould.

Porsche went water-cooled and half the industry turned its nose up. We didn't. The 996 was a blank canvas and we attacked it — front lips, rear bumpers, GT3-style rockers and the small wing that is still a 996 staple today. It was the first platform where we designed every piece from scratch instead of reworking a classic shape.

By the mid-90s Better Bodies had one of the strongest and most popular 993 product lines in the world. RS-style splitters, side rockers, rear wings and full Euro RS kits left the shop faster than we could make them, and the last air-cooled 911 became the car that put our name on the map.

Three years in, the shop had grown to more than 250 moulds and a reputation for building the wildest G-body and early 911 wide bodies and super-wide bodies in Southern California. If a customer wanted their 911 to look like nothing else at the show, they came to Armando.

Armando Lopez was 21 years old with a rented bay, a borrowed sander and a dream of building body kits for the car he loved most — the Porsche 911. Better Bodies opened its doors in 1987 under a hand-painted yellow sign, shaping fiberglass by hand one bumper at a time. The passion that started in that bay is the same one in the shop today.