Porsche 356

The 356 was the first car sold under the Porsche name. The prototype, a mid-engined aluminium roadster known as 356 No. 1, was registered in June 1948 at Gmünd in Carinthia, where the design office had moved during the war. The production cars that followed put the engine behind the rear axle, and the first fifty or so were built by hand at Gmünd with aluminium bodies.

In 1950 production moved to Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, with steel bodies made by the coachbuilder Reutter. The car began with Volkswagen-derived mechanical parts and steadily became more of a Porsche: the engines grew from 1.1 to 1.6 litres, a full synchromesh gearbox arrived, and the final 356 C had disc brakes on all four wheels. Around 76,000 were built in total.

The Carrera name first appeared on a 356. It marked the cars fitted with Ernst Fuhrmann's four-cam racing engine, and commemorated Porsche's class wins on the Carrera Panamericana road race in Mexico in 1953 and 1954.

Variants

Variant	Years	Notes
356 (Pre-A)	1948–1955	Split or bent windscreen, 1.1 to 1.5 litre engines.
356 A	1955–1959	Curved one-piece screen, 1.6 litre engine available.
Speedster	1954–1958	Low screen, minimal hood, built at the request of the US importer Max Hoffman.
356 B	1959–1963	Raised bumpers and headlamps; Super 90 engine.
356 C / SC	1963–1965	Disc brakes all round; SC with 95 PS.
Carrera	1955–1965	Four-cam engine, up to 130 PS in the 2.0 litre Carrera 2.

On a road trip

A 356 is light, narrow and geared for mountain roads, which makes it better company on an alpine pass than its power figures suggest. It is slow by modern standards on the motorway to get there, the drum brakes of earlier cars need planning on long descents, and the swing-axle rear suspension rewards smooth inputs. Many owners tour them hard; a well-sorted one is durable.