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Films:
1956 Porsche 356A Speedster's Racing Past Shines Through
Paul, thank you. The grey was standard (or at least common) for white cars with black interiors, 1954-1959. Knobs matched the steering wheel. For this particular car, the original steering wheel had been retained and used since new. Stripping the paint revealed grey was in fact the original color. I’m deferring to Brett Johnson’s Restorer’s Guide for the general info on colors. Best, Jon.
I’m likely to come off as a cranky old guy, but I like this car far better than most today. From a design standpoint, it’s all it needs to be, and nothing more. Cars today are WAY over-designed. Lines intersecting lines, creases upon curves, inverted angles…the list is long. And don’t get me started on interiors — most are truly awful. Busy busy, busy! Every car’s dash should start like this and add only what’s absolutely necessary.
David P, thanks, it was a difficult decision and you described the dilemma exactly. When the car arrived, it was pretty clear that we would have to go to bare metal to assess rust (some, it turned out) and possible crash damage (not much, it turned out). A couple of areas required metal replacement, not uncommon in these cars. Even in the case of the seats, the steel shells had a few cracks and required welding before they were safe to reinstall. So, after we restored the structural integrity of the car, I could have either repainted it yellow and replicated the numbers and decals, or taken it back to original. I opted to match the original paint color (found under 7 coats of rattle-can paint jobs), thinking that it wouldn’t be all that authentic and possibly poseur-ish to replicate its race livery unless we reapplied the dents and bondo. But, you could argue either way. Mostly I wanted to feel like I had walked into Max Hoffmann’s and bought the car in ’56.
Back in the 60’s I worked for an insurance company on the East Coast. We had a fellow in the office who had bought on of the first Speedsters to come onto the States. He actually towed it to races with an XK120! He brought it all the way to Florida to run it at Sebring. Those were the days. No big factory teams. You could drive a car to the track, race it, and drive it home. We ended up buying a Speedster in the 70s. Never raced it. Wish I had it now.
Dick
Its cars like this that i love the car hobby and why this site is the first go to for me in the morning. I was never a huge fan of Porsche but i always had some respect for them and this car is no exception. From the simple elegant and very recognizable body style to the tasteful clean interior. I love cars like this Porsche with its dual purpose design to go from street to race track in very short amount of time and effort not to mention it had great prosperity on the race track. The owner of this beauty brought up a great point about this old cars being very mechanical you can actually feel whats going on with the car which makes the experience that much more enjoyable and i for one agree its why classic cars rock..thanks again for the article!
Great video, always love your work. I saw a very similar story about a speedster restoration that was originally an old racer here in the link below. Keep up the great work!
[url=”http://www.carbuildindex.com/2687/1956-porsche-pre-a-speedster-81221-restored-and-reunited-with-previous-owner/”]Your text to link…[/url]
