Isami Amemiya founded the company in 1974 with a singular focus: developing, tuning, and racing rotary-engined cars. The Mazda RX-7, in both its FC and FD3S generations, became the primary platform for RE Amemiya's work. The company developed aerodynamic body kits, rotary-specific cooling solutions, and complete race builds — including 20B three-rotor conversions that went beyond the factory twin-rotor configuration. The name abbreviates both the founder's family name and the company's core area of expertise.
RE Amemiya entered Super GT competition in 1995, becoming the sole rotary-powered entrant in the series. The car competed in the GT300 class powered by a 3-rotor 20B engine in an RX-7 platform. The team achieved a GT300 class victory in 2006 and went on to record three additional race wins and eleven podiums across their time in the series. In 2009 RE Amemiya finished second in the GT300 Championship, narrowly beaten by the Racing Project Bandoh Lexus IS350. Their final Super GT season was 2010, in which the team finished third in the GT300 standings behind Hasemi Motorsport and Autobacs Racing Team Aguri.
The company also entered the D1 Grand Prix drifting series from 2004. In their second year of competition, 2005, driver Masao Suenaga won a round at Fuji Speedway and finished runner-up in the overall Grand Prix standings, losing the title by a single point to Yasuyuki Kazama.
RE Amemiya's cars became regular fixtures on Japanese motoring television. The company's RX-7 FD3S builds competed in touge races on the show Hot Version, contested in cat-and-mouse format against other high-profile tuned cars. The RE Amemiya blue FD3S held the title of Maou (Demon King) from 2004 through 2006, losing it to a J's Racing Honda S2000 at the 2007 event in wet conditions. The company reclaimed the Maou title in 2009 using a new green FD3S, defeating the same J's Racing car. In total, RE Amemiya has won the Maou title four times across three different cars.
The company's GT300 race car and the blue FD3S road car both appear in Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo video game series.
In the anime and manga series Initial D, the Project D arc features both Keisuke Takahashi's FD RX-7 and Ryosuke Takahashi's FC RX-7 wearing RE Amemiya body kits. The association gave the company visibility beyond Japan's specialist automotive press, connecting RE Amemiya to one of the most widely distributed works of Japanese motoring fiction.
RE Amemiya occupies a specific position in Japanese car culture as a company that made rotary tuning technically credible at the highest level of domestic motorsport and documented that credibility across years of filmed competition. The rotary engine's sensitivity to heat and the difficulty of preparing it for sustained high-load use meant that a specialist's understanding — not just aesthetic modification — underpinned the company's reputation. That technical seriousness, combined with the cultural weight of the RX-7 platform and its Initial D associations, established RE Amemiya as a reference point in Japanese performance car culture that extended well beyond its home region.