Some years ago I learned about a guy called Akira Nakai one of Japan's most famous and respected so called 'artisans' who restore, modify or customize some of the worlds greatest cars - Japanese and others - to a degree beyond perfection. Akira cuts apart perfectly normal and intact Porsche wheel wells by hand, eye balling it and then attaching extra wide fenders to give it a special look like the one of RWB (Rauh Welt Begriff - losely translated from German to mean: Rough World Term, doesn't make sense I know but it's a Japanese Porsche tuning legend and he wanted the name to be special and German :). Here is a taste:
I'm not sure where the term originally came from but I know that Nissan have a spot in their assembly line where a certain number of chassis are taken out of the regular line and put on a separate smaller line which is manned by 'artisans'. Once the cars have run through the special loop they're reinserted into the regular line. Engineers, mechanics and workers who take special care and extra attention to their work to perform work on special cars during the production are called 'Artisans'. I'm talking about the Nissan GT-R.
I highly recommend this documentary about this special and small group of car enthusiasts in that place of the rising sun:
