1948 TO 1965

Porsche 356

Ferdinand Porsche founded the Austrian company Porsche together with his sister Louise.

At the end of the 1930s Ferdinand Porsche designed what we today know as the Volkswagen Type 1 Beetle. It was Adolf Hitler’s idea to make a reliable, simple, 4-seater passenger car, which at the same time should be a low-priced vehicle (just below 1.000 Reichmark).

The Volkswagen became known as the KDF vehicle (Kraft durch Freude) and it was made possible for the ordinary German citizens to save up for the vehicle by purchasing coupons for the KDF coupon booklet. When the booklet was filled, they could go collect their Volkswagen vehicle. The Second World War halted the original purpose of the vehicle. After the Second World War, Ferdinand’s son, Ferdinand Porsche Jr., also known as Ferdinand “Ferry” Porsche, designed, and made the first prototypes for a sportscar. As he said: “I couldn’t find a sportscar, which suited my purpose, so I decided to design one myself.”

The first 356 prototype got published as the so-called “No. 1” on June 8th, 1948, from a small “factory” situated in an old sawmill in Gmünd, Austria. The first 356s were built on a tubular chassis frame with a hand-built body in aluminium. During the 356-production period from 1948 to 1965 it went through various improvements in respect of both the body, suspension, interior and engine. The most popular engine was introduced in the 1957 model, which ended up as a 1600 CC engine (Super) with 95 hp in the SC version. During the model years different types were produced with a total of 76.313 vehicles – quite impressive for a sportscar in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Porsche 356 production overview:
356 Pre-A: 1948-1955 - 7.627 specimen
356 A: 1955-1959 - 21.045 specimen
356 B: 1959-1963 - 30.963 specimen
356 C: 1963-1965- 16.678 specimen

Although the Porsche 356 was running out of production by the end of 1965, its 4-cylinder pushrod engine was upgraded and developed into a type 616/36 version, which could be used in a 4-cylinder Porsche 912 generation introduced in 1965. It was not at all the intention of Porsche to continue with a 4-cylinder engine, because they spent lots of efforts in getting a great 6-cylinder engine and brand-new 911 body manufactured. However, in comparison with the 356 the 911 became quite expensive and to soften the price gap between the 911 and the 356 Porsche decided to quickly bring a 4-cylinder 912 model on the market.

As a result, customers purchased almost 33.000 cars in the models 912 Coupé and Targa from 1966 to 1969, where the model was phased out due to US anti-pollution laws implemented in California.