Leffingwell - The Complete Book of Porsche 911: Every Model since 1964

1961 356B Carrera 2 Cabriolet
For several years this car was Ferry Porsches daily driver.

1949 356/2 COUPE

1951 356 COUPE

1952 356 AMERICA ROADSTER

1954 356 SPEEDSTER

1955 356A CONTINENTAL COUPE

1956 356A EUROPEAN COUPE

1957 356A SPEEDSTER

1958 356A HARDTOP CABRIOLET

1959 356A-1600GS/GT CARRERA

1952 TYP 530 CLAY MODEL

1960 356B CABRIOLET

1961 356B S90 ROADSTER

1961 356B 2000 GS CARRERA 2

1962 TYP 754 T7 COUPE

1964 356C COUPE

1965 356 SC CABRIOLET

A new car! For customers and automakers, this phrase signifies success, even as it hints at innumerable choices. Porsches first decade in business brought revenues and the confidence to undertake a second-generation vehicle. Customers liked the 356s that appeared in 1948 and the 356A models the company introduced in 1956. These automobiles embodied Ferry Porsches dream of honoring his father, Dr. Ing. h.c. Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche. But as Ferry related in a story he told countless times before his death in March 1998, when he looked around at the cars available to him 50 years earlier, he found nothing he liked. So with the help of his fathers engineering staff, he created his own and began manufacturing them in a former sawmill in Gmnd, Austria. By the early 1950s, after returning to prewar workshops in Stuttgart, Germany, customers let him know they wanted more power, less noise, a more spacious interior with larger rear seats, and additional luggage space.

Ferry Porsches first road cars fit the restrained attitudes prevalent in Europe following World War II. Body engineer Erwin Komenda developed beautifully proportioned coupes and open cars that slipped a function-hugging form around a driver and passenger. The 356 gave owners intimacy with style. Franz Reimspeisss air-cooled, opposed four-cylinder engines and Leopold Schmids stiff chassis offered lively, responsive driving experiences.

While Porsche assembled its earliest coupes in Gmnd, in the fall of 1948 the company approached Swiss coachbuilder Beutler Carrosserie to develop and manufacture convertibles. Ernst Beutler, a man of modest ambitions, stepped back from the project after completing a handful of cars. He doubted his ability to meet Porsches future demands. For Porsche, however, the timing was auspicious; while its factory space in Stuttgart had suffered damage from Allied bombs during the war, in the early 1950s, occupation forces allowed engineers, fabricators, mechanics, and assemblers to move back into the facilities. Next door, Reutter Carrosserie was anxious to take on new work.

Porsche assembled just 52 cars at the Gmnd facility. The coupes sold for 9,950DM, roughly $2,369, at a time when a loaf of bread cost 14 cents. This bench seat was standard equipment.

Porsche technicians assembled these earliest production coupes, known internally as 356/2, by hand in a former lumber mill in Gmnd, Austria, in the province of Carinthia. Porsche delivered this car on June 28, 1949, to Dr. Ernst Herschel.

Porsche supported automobile shows throughout Europe and the United Kingdom with sales people and vehicles. An Austrian with substantial ambitions, Maximilian Hoffman brought Porsche cars (as well as Mercedes-Benz, Jaguars, and Volkswagens) to the United States. His vigorous personality, effective salesmanship, and obsession with detail and perfection led to success with Porsches in America. He raced the cars and encouraged others to do the same, including an equally adventurous fellow Austrian, John von Neumann, who personally drove the cars to the West Coast for his own customers. As the American market grew, Hoffman and von Neumann convinced Stuttgart management to develop new versions for their sporting and racing customers. A trim America Roadster appeared in late 1951 and 1952, followed by the rakish Speedster in 1954. Engine chief Franz Reimspeiss developed power plants of 1.1-, 1.3-, and 1.5-liter displacements for Porsches growing product line. At the top of the performance spectrum, the new four-cam Carrera, designed by newcomer Ernst Fuhrmann, offered a 1.5-liter dual overhead camshaft flat four that produced 115 horsepower.

Ferdinand Porsche had died in January 1952, and his first generation of designers commingled with Ferrys younger generation of engineers. One of these newcomers was Ferrys son Ferdinand Alexander, known to family and friends as F. A. or Butzi. F. A. was among the first students at the Hochschule fr Gestaltung, the upper school for art in nearby Ulm. This institution nurtured progressive designers, emphasizing the aesthetic of everyday objects and spaces and incorporating mathematics in the design process. The faculty taught creative minds such as F. A. to reduce ornament to a fundamental and pure form of geometry. With Germany in ruins after the war, the school pushed students to start from new, to feel little obligation to refer to or take from the past. In his brief time at Ulm, F. A. learned to question whether old techniques applied to new products, to develop independent thoughts and ideas, and to express them confidently. He left the school in 1957, just as his father confronted the need to develop Porsches first all-new product, a successor to the 356.

The coupes rode on a 2,100mm (82.7-inch) wheelbase and were 3,870mm (153.4 inches) long overall. They weighed about 765 kilograms, 1,683 pounds, and were capable of nearly 140 kilometers per hour, 88 miles per hour.