The Porsche 356\/1 was the first real car created by Ferdinand “Ferry” Porsche. … The aluminum roadster body of the 356\/1 was designed by Porsche employee Erwin Komenda in April 1948 at Gm\u00fcnd and completed only a month later.\u00a0The 356 \u201cNo. 1\u201d Roadster was registered on June 8, 1948\u2014and underwent considerable modification over the next several decades. Porsche has now brought the original form of its first sports car back to life as a show car.<\/p>\n
The \u201cNo. 1\u201d always wore custom-made suits. Back in 1948, tinsmith Friedrich Weber spent two months clothing the first Porsche. The original apparel didn\u2019t last very long, however, for the roadster not only changed hands many times over the years. It was damaged and repaired, modernized and converted. Its attire kept changing but its identity remained the same. It was shaped by history. Yet its essence remains inviolable.<\/p>\n
The original condition of the \u201cNo. 1\u201d Roadster is lost and can no longer be restored. But its custom-made suit has been reconceived in something very close to the original form and reproduced using the same materials and techniques. This painstaking, manual labor of love, however, couldn\u2019t be completed overnight. In their efforts to create a copy of the 1948 roadster body that\u2019s true to the original in every detail and dimension, experts from the Porsche Museum first made a 3-D scan of the existing vehicle. A computer then superimposed these virtual results onto the design drawings from 1948, which had been scanned as well. This revealed a number of deviations. Step by step, the radii from a fixed point were modified to match the original form. Archive staff members consulted all the original photos available, studied drawings, and analyzed journals. Finally, a computer-assisted milling machine carved out a life-size model of the car from a block of rigid foam.<\/p>\n
When placed next to the car from 1948, some significant differences are evident. The original roadster\u2019s body tapered more to the rear. Its front had a more pronounced nose. The original one-part rear lid, which folded at the back, extended from the passenger compartment to just over the rear bumper. It was later replaced on the roadster by a two-part construction with a lateral panel over the engine and a shorter hood over the rear storage space.<\/p>\n
With the help of original wooden gauges, a replica of the original \u201cNo. 1\u201d car body finally took shape\u2014similar to the way in which the original aluminum body was made seventy years ago. In 1948 its metal sheeting was bent, pulled, and pushed using hand tools. This same meticulous attention to detail extended to formulating the color for the replica\u2019s paint job. The original car had been painted over a number of times, so samples were taken from under the dashboard and analyzed in order to reproduce the original shade as closely as possible. Period fittings with dials adapted exactly to their original counterparts flank the steering column. Even the mats are knotted in the same way they were seventy years ago. The only thing the replica can\u2019t do is drive. An engine won\u2019t be placed into its mesh frame, and its rear axle consists of a simple pipe. The front axle\u2014including the steering system and wheel\u2014was taken from a Volkswagen Beetle, as with the original.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Porsche 356\/1 was the first real car created by Ferdinand “Ferry” Porsche. … The aluminum roadster body of the 356\/1 was designed by Porsche employee Erwin Komenda in April 1948 at Gm\u00fcnd and completed only a month later.\u00a0The 356 \u201cNo. 1\u201d Roadster was registered on June 8, 1948\u2014and underwent considerable modification over the next several decades. Porsche has now brought the original form of its first sports car back to life as a show car. The \u201cNo. 1\u201d always […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":376248,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2184,9348,17102,16906],"tags":[2457,16841,33,13061,17405,89,2016,6585,6559,6561],"class_list":["post-376247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1940s","category-guides","category-model-guides-concept-cars","category-porsche","tag-1940s","tag-1940s-cars","tag-concept","tag-car-profiles","tag-model-guides-concept-cars","tag-porsche","tag-porsche-356","tag-porsche-356-model-in-depth","tag-porsche-model-in-depth","tag-porsche-concept-cars-in-depth"],"yoast_head":"\n