Founded by Frank Rinderknecht in the late 1970s, Rinspeed was mainly a Porsche tuner who was mostly known for their outrageous body modifications, mainly using the Porsche 911 as a starting point. Allthough not solely working on Porsches, most of Rinspeed's well known cars from the 1980s were Porsches: among the best known Rinspeed creations are the Porsche 911 based 939 (R39) and 969 (R69), R59 and Eclipse and the 928 based R29.

Other than just tuner, in the 1980s Rinspeed was the official dealer for both AMG and Koenig-Specials in Switzerland.