PORSCHE 356 COUPE
When a young Ferry Porsche saw his first model Type 356 prototype sports car completed in June 1948, he could scarcely have imagined it becoming a world class racing sports car. But that it did, and much much more throughout Europe, North America, Latin America and other continents.
But the car that ultimately became a legend at first began as an experiment. In the beginning the “Type 356” – soon to become the “356A” – was a simple and diminutive sports car, designed from the towering automotive mind of Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche, and made from the hands of a small group of automotive craftsmen. These were masters of engine, chassis and automotive coachwork skills who were personally sought out by Ferry Porsche himself. Over the ensuing twenty years, some 80,000 of these cars were sold around the world, in progressive versions. The Porsche 356A comprised the foundation of Porsche cars to follow – which in time became arguably the most successful high performance sports cars and racecars in the world.
Ferry Porsche, the son of Austrian automotive engineering legend Ferdinand Porsche, had taken over management of his father’s company when a post-WWII French court imprisoned Ferdinand Porsche for alleged war crimes, resultant from his wartime engineering support of Adolf Hitler. Following his illustrious engineering exploits for Austro-Daimler and Daimler-Benz, Ferdinand Porsche designed the Volkswagen – Hitler’s reputed “people’s car,” along with many tank and combat vehicle projects during Hitler’s reign.
After taking charge of his father’s company due to Ferdinand’s post-WWII imprisonment, Ferry Porsche resurrected an earlier program of his father’s – that of creating a sports car based upon the essential Volkswagen chassis and engine, the first to bear the “Porsche” name. Among many upgrades and special features, the “Type 356” featured more horsepower than the VW and it had understated yet compelling styling, with effective aerodynamics.
Originally, 50 aluminum-bodied Porsche Type 356’s were completed one-at-a-time in an old converted sawmill. But immediate sales necessitated a more mechanized process and conversion to a steel body. The 356 went into pre-production during the winter of 1947-48 and the aluminum prototype, built entirely by hand and labeled “No. 1” was completed on June 8, 1948.
The first Porsches, carrying the designation “356A”, incorporated a rear-mounted, enhanced 40-horsepower Volkswagen engine and parts sourced from wherever the company could find them, owing to the scarcities of post-War Europe. Porsche designers made the decision to utilize the engine case they had originally designed for the Volkswagen. It was an air-cooled pushrod OHV flat-four engine design. For application to the 356A they designed new cylinder heads, camshaft, crankshaft, intake and exhaust manifolds, in addition to dual carburetors to more than double the VW’s horsepower. While the first prototype 356A had a mid-engine layout, all later 356’s had rear-mounted engines.
A Zurich, Switzerland, distributor bought the first five 356’s, which were hand-built at the company’s original sawmill headquarters in Gmund, Austria. The model went into formalized production in 1950. Despite its compact size, the car was popular with generally wealthy customers, some of whom endeavored to go racing with it. One month after the first car left the factory, a 356A won its first race at Innsbruck, Austria. The Porsche racing legacy was born.
From 1950 to 1964, the Porsche 356 mesmerized world auto enthusiasts with a progressive parade of year-over-year improvements on their compelling theme: spectacular handling, superior power-to-weight ratio, unique styling and solid dependability on both road and track. While the original 356A model was introduced with its now legendary 1100cc air-cooled opposed-cylinder “boxer” type engine, displacement and power were steadily increased for subsequent models. Initially termed the “T1,” short for its Porsche factory designation as “Type 1,” improvements and options over the car’s first eight production years included engine size increases up to 1,582cc’s and the “Carrera” four-cam engine option which was derived from the developing factory Porsche 550 Spyder racecars.
Late 1959 saw the introduction of the Porsche 356B, which featured a subtly refined design profile in its “T6” body style, a more powerful engine and disc brakes. Both hardtop and cabriolet were offered. The model 356C, first available in 1964, offered the very best of all Porsche 356 attributes up to that point, including the option for its most powerful engine ever, a “B4” 2.0 litre Carrera 2 four-cam engine that produced over 100 horsepower. This car, although officially discontinued in 1965 due to the ’64 introduction of the Porsche 911, continued to sell robustly into 1966.
All Porsche 356s were of unibody construction and were shipped solely with 4-speed manual gearboxes.
Serious racers in Europe and the USA took special note of the Porsche 356 SL in 1951 and later the Carrera GT, a track-specific version of the Carrera, first introduced in the mid-1950s with a baseline 1500cc four-cam engine. Notably, In 1957 a Carrera GT finished fifth place in the Tour de France Automobile, and a pair of Carrera GTs with 1529 cc engines won their class at the 1957 12-Hours of Reims endurance race.
The Carrera GT served as the motivating prototype for racing Porsches of the 1956-1965 era, both factory issued and privately owned versions. Today’s vintage racing Porsche 356 models continue to carry forward the core characteristics of this car, the “Icebox”; stripped of its interior amenities for lightness and augmented with optimized engine tuning and race-bred suspension.
After winning its class in the 1961 Le Mans 24-hours and finishing 10th overall, followed by winning its class in the 1962 12-Hours of Sebring, the Porsche 356 reached legendary global racecar status, where it remains today among vintage racers around the world.
