First Porsche or not?

Type 64 predated the 356 by a decade, but is it a real Porsche?

Porsche 356 “No.1” was deservedly one of the stars of Porsche’s Rennsport Reunion 7 at the Laguna Seca circuit in California last month. The 1948 roadster was the first car the brand registered for the road and therefore is officially the first Porsche, period.

Or is it? Ferdinand Porsche was a key member of the KdF-Wagen (what we now know as the Volkswagen Beetle) project in the 1930s — along with the Nazi government, of course. But separately, he was also keen to make a racing car and created a streamlined body with the intention of fitting a bespoke V10 engine. The Cd value was an

incredible (for the time) 0.28.

It didn’t pan out and the concept was sold to KdF. Motorsport didn’t really fit with the focus on the “People’s Car”, but racing was very popular at the time.

Following the Rome-Berlin Axis agreement between Mussolini and Hitler, a plan was hatched for a Berlin-Rome road rally to run in 1938.

KdF gave the go-ahead for what became the Type 64 racer, using KdF-Wagen mechanicals

including a

1.1-litre engine.

But the race never happened. World events kind of . . . took over.

Long story short: three cars were built between 1939-40 and only one survives.

But is the Type 64 the first Porsche? Well, it wasn’t created with the Porsche name on the nose (that was added later, after the war). But it was created by Ferdinand Porsche and it sure looks like one. You decide.

Type 64 #3 was the centre of another good yarn in 2019, when it came up for auction by RM Sotheby’s in Monterey (coincidentally, close to the location of this year’s Rennsport Reunion). At one point a bid of US$17m was incorrectly displayed as $70m, the whole thing stalled and the car failed to sell.