How it all the started …in brief

The Type 356 was the first real Porsche sports car and Professor Ferdinand Porsche’s last great work. He was influenced by Piero Dusio, an Italian, who in the early WW2 years produced Cisitalia sports cars using modified Fiat parts.

Professor Ferdinand thought of how he could build something like the Italian,s sports car from VW parts.

However, only old VW parts were readily available in Austria just after the War, that is why the first Porsche was made from a network of tubes, like the Cisitalia, known as a spaceframe.

The Type 356 also indicated the 356th project since formation of Porsche’s design office in 1930. Ferry Porsche started the project in 1947, having run and tested a chassis version around the mountain roads of Gmund in 1948. Erwin Komenda was authorised to construct a body, resulting in a roadster, inspired by the Type 114.

One of its first drivers was Ferry Porsche, when negotiating the famous Grossglockner Pass, the cars frame buckled, nearly collapsing the rear torsion bar housing. Ferry strengthened it with two pieces of scrap iron from a friendly road worker nearby. In 1948 the first prototype was sold to von Senger, a Swiss dealer for 7000 francs.

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