Marque guide
We trace the history of the rear-engined Porsches
The history of the rear-engined Porsches.
We covered the front-engined Porsches a couple of issues ago but just writing this month’s ‘emerging classic’ piece on the Boxster reinforces the fact that every time Porsche has tried to intoduce a front-engined sports car to the range it has ultimately failed to replace the 911. The Boxster’s mid-mounted powerplant seems to be accepted by the Porsche faithful but even now the 911 is still selling strongly and remains a Porsche icon.
The 911 has also very nearly been Porsche’s downfall too. Just like Volkswagen which shares its ancestry, Porsche as a company at one point came to rely all too heavily on a single rear-engined air-cooled model and nearly ended up in serious trouble as a result.
Now though, thanks to the success of the Boxster and its VW/Audi-derived 4x4s, Porsche has the luxury of retaining the rear-engined layout which has been its trademark since the 1950s. We run through the models which make up the company’s history.
356
At the end of the war, Dr Porsche found himself interned first by the US and then by the French, who held him for some 22 months until the Porsche family managed to raise sufficient bail.
Meanwhile, Porsche’s son ‘Ferry’ had taken over the management of the Porsche company and although it initially scrabbled around repairing and maintaining the VW-derived cars and jeeps still in use, the firm eventually began to find its feet and was approached by Cisitalia to design a Grand Prix car, the fee providing much-needed funds for bailing Porsche senior out of French internment. At the same time Ferry and the other engineers had begun to work up a design for a Porsche sports car based on Volkswagen parts and this was given the Porsche type number 356. The first prototype was built in 1948 and with an eye to safeguarding future supply of VW running gear, Ferry approached the then thriving (or at least recovering) Volkswagen for a formal arrangement. The result was an agreement which gave Porsche a royalty on every VW built to their design (which essentially meant the Beetle) if Porsche agreed not to design a competitor. The Porsche cars could also be sold and supported through the Volkswagen dealer network and the Porsche family gained the Volkswagen import concession for Austria.
The new 356 was exhibited for the first time at the 1950 Paris motor show, featuring the 1100 VW engine, later upgraded to a 1300 and then 1500 unit. In 1955 it was evolved into the 356A, which gained a 1600 engine and ultimately evolved into the four-cam Carrera. In
1960 the 356A became the 356B with ever more powerful engine options, lasting until 1963 when its replacement was launched. Contrary to popular belief, although the 356 uses the same concepts as the Beetle, few components are shared: the floorpan chassis are different and although the engine crankcase is similar the cams, cranks, manifolding and carburation are all different.
911
The 911 – or 901 as it was originally to be known before Peugeot objected – was unveiled in 1963, going on sale in 1964 and was a big jump in technology for a relatively small company like Porsche, doing away with the Beetle-style separate floorpan and torsion beam suspension and moving to a monocoque bodyshell with modern strut front suspension. The engine remained air-cooled but now sported six cylinders with overhead cams replacing the pushrods of the 356 motor and was good for 128 bhp.
Although it’s looked broadly similar for six decades, Porsche has constantly evolved the 911 and that process began soon after launch: in 1965 the four-cylinder 912 was announced to provide a more affordable entry-level model, although contrary to popular belief it wasn’t the Beetle engine but the 90 bhp Porsche 356SC engine in the back. Meanwhile, in 1966 the 911 was uprated to a handy 158 bhp and badged 911S with the Targa joining the range the same year and the semi-automatic Sportomatic being added in 1967. The 911T was introduced in 1968 to replace the 912 with a similarly basic model, no anti-roll bars and a four-speed box as standard.
Displacement of the 911 was increased to 2.2 litres in 1969 and then to 2.4 litres in 1971, while the ‘ducktail’ rear spoiler appeared for the first time on the Carrera 2.7 RS of 1972.
In 1973 the 911 received the first of its many facelifts, introducing the seats with integrated headrests and prominent impact-absorbing plastic bumpers with their trademark bellows which were designed to meet crash test standards in the US market.
By this time the 911 was a seriously fast car but performance was taken into another dimension in 1974 with the launch of the 911 Turbo. Producing 260 bhp from its 3-litre engine courtesy of a KKK blower, the Turbo took the ducktail rear spoiler and used it to accommodate the intercooler, turning it into the massive whaletail synonymous with the 911 since then. The Turbo was taken up to 3.3 litres in 1977 and power jumped to a mighty 296 bhp. Meanwhile, in 1982 the naturally aspirated 911 changed its name from SC to Carrera with a 3.2-litre engine good for 228 bhp. On a more practical level, in 1976 Porsche became the first car maker in the world to entirely galvanise its bodyshells.
914
Like the later 924, the 914 started life as a VW model, the car being developed for Volkswagen by Porsche, which at the time was subcontracted to handle most of its R&D work.
The car was originally intended to serve as both a Porsche and a Volkswagen, with VW looking to replace the ageing Karmann-Ghia and Porsche needing to replace the 912 (the four-cylinder version of the 911). Development work was headed by Ferdinand Piëch who would later rise to the very top of the VW group and in many ways the car was technically superior to the 911. A proper mid-engined design as opposed to the tail-heavy 911 layout, the 914 was based around the suspension of later Beetles. MacPherson struts were used at the front and torsion bars at the rear with trailing arms and the double-jointed driveshafts as used on the 1302/1303 Beetle which prevented the undesirable camber changes from the simpler swing-axle design.
The plan was to market the car with a four-cylinder engine as a VW model and with the 911’s six-cylinder engine as a Porsche, but after doubts were expressed over the viability of this approach in the US market, the decision was taken to sell both cars in North America as VW-Porsche.
The six-cylinder car, known as the 914/6, wasn’t the affordable sports car the original brief had demanded and as a result never sold in huge numbers but the four-cylinder car became Porsche’s best-selling model to that date, outselling the more expensive 911 by some margin with just under 119,000 examples produced.
The 914/4 initially used VW’s 80 bhp 1.7-litre engine as found in the 411LE saloon, later replaced from 1972 by an 84 bhp 1.8-litre version of the engine, while the 914/6 was effectively replaced by a 2-litre version of the VW engine good for 100 bhp and shared with the 912.
The 914 was produced until 1976, at which point it was replaced by the very different Porsche 924 – ironically, also developed by Porsche for the VW group as an Audi coupé until VW had cold feet and the design reverted to Porsche.