GHOSTS OF GMÜND
Classic Porsche drops by Helmut Pfeifhofer’s Gmünd museum
Back in the autumn of 1948, in the tiny Austrian village of Gmünd, a young boy peered curiously around a workshop door to see what all the hammering noises were. What he saw inside was to influence the rest of his life. That boyʼs name was Helmut Pfeifhofer, whose name adorns the Porsche Automuseum in the same village, the only privately owned Porsche-sanctioned museum in the world.
In the still smouldering ruins of Germany after the end of WW2 German manufacturing was strictly controlled and, with father Ferdinand held by the French while repatriation procedures were carried out, son Ferry needed to find a suitable place to begin production of his brave new design.
Ferdinand had a connection with Gmünd as heʼd tested many of his new creations up and down the nearby Katschberg Pass, one of Europeʼs steepest roads, and had often stayed in the town. When Ferry contacted the mayor he was only too happy to encourage a new enterprise to bring investment to the town, and gave Ferry the use of a disused saw mill at the foot of the old castle.
A 300-strong workforce came from Germany where theyʼd worked with Ferdinand to create the first prototype, the midengined 356 001, but as finance for such a project was understandably hard to come by, to keep the burgeoning company afloat, Ferry made things that could be sold to local farmers, from water-powered generators to winches. Once Ferdinand had been freed from prison, they were ready to start with the more practical Ferry-designed car, the 356 coupé.
The first job was to search for metal. It wasnʼt too hard to find for in the aftermath of the fighting there were literally acres of scrap available. Steel was needed for the new chassis and aluminium for most of the body, while the mechanicals were sourced from various Vw-built vehicles, such as the Porschedesigned Schwimmwagen and Kübelwagen.
The 1.1-litre engines had a few small improvements, such as re-worked cylinder heads and a dual carburettor set-up. The increased horsepower, up from 25bhp to a heady 39, sounds laughable today but weighing just 600kg the new coupé outperformed the VW in just about every way. Some 48 cars were made here before the family relocated back to Stuttgart at the end of 1949. The rest, as they say, is history.
The Gmünd workshop, with no one else to move in, was
abandoned and for many years remained empty. Helmut Pfeifhofer though, as he grew up, never forgot what he saw inside on that day back in 1948. The row of half-built 356s looked like spaceships, especially as at that time there were only four other cars in the town.
He began work as an antiques dealer but over the years collected any Porsche memorabilia that came his way, from brochures and posters, to toys and spare parts. And although it was nearly twenty years before he could afford his first Porsche, he made up for lost time. His first was a Stuttgartmade 356 but it was quickly joined by a 550 Spyder, many 356 coupés and cabriolets, and peaked in 1972 with the purchase of one of the very rare Gmünd cars, number 20. This car was especially important to Helmut as it was quite possibly one of the cars in the line-up on the day he looked in as a boy.
It had been a non-runner for a few years and when he pulled it out of the barn in which it had been stored, it was apparent that corrosion had begun to take its toll on the bodywork. Most people had updated the early Gmünd 356s with later spec bumpers and lights to try and make them look a bit more modern, but not this one. To better assess its condition he stripped it down to bare metal but once back in natural matt silver it looked just like he remembered it as a young boy, and so left it as it was...and it has remained that way ever since.
Throughout the 1960s and ʼ70s, Helmut had put his own money into the maintenance of the old mill, making sure the roof and windows were watertight, but when his collection had reached the point where he was was forced to look for more storage space, his wife suggested buying the mill and turning it into a museum.
The local mayor agreed and since 1982, number 20 has had pride of place at the back of the lower floor, the only exhibit of the thirty or so cars on display that you cannot walk straight past. The bare metal patina, steel doors and bonnet a darker shade than the aluminium of the rest of the car, as well as its delightfully low stance, gives it a definite ʻrat rodʼ appearance. The interior, too, with remains of the paint Helmut didnʼt quite scrape off still on the dashboard, and a large hole in the middle where the missing clock thatʼs currently away getting restored, doesnʼt look quite how a priceless classic museum exhibit normally looks.
Number 20 by far transcends its slightly less than concours condition though as once, seventy years ago, these very walls echoed with the sounds of the body panels being beaten out, quite possibly with the very mallet displayed next to the car. Ferdinand and Ferry would have been standing on these very floorboards overseeing the production of this, only the 20th car they had made so far, as it neared completion.
They would probably have been nervous about the quality
of the second-hand VW parts, and wondered whether they could sell sufficient cars quickly enough to keep production going. But neither they nor the craftsman working on the cars, or watching them bump down the steep cobbled ramp to head off to their new owners, would have had any inkling about what these cars would mark the beginning of.
Number 20, despite being the main attraction of the museum isnʼt just a static display any more, though, as Helmutʼs son Christoph, who is now in charge of the museumʼs daily running, recently got it roadworthy again. Heʼs keen to point out that it wasnʼt really a restoration he undertook, rather just the minimum work possible to get it moving under its own steam.
Before Helmut acquired it, previous owners had driven the coupé 63,500km so the engine was in need of a rebuild. The gaskets, spark plugs and age-perished fan belt were all replaced, just as in any major service, but the pistons and valves were worn out, so were replaced. But everything that could be retained was, for originality on an example like this is everything.
One day last spring Helmut fired up the engine, and for Classic Porsche he repeated the performance. Compared to modern cars it is ridiculously noisy and the small room was soon filled with a cloud of bluish smoke as the engine spluttered to life. ʻItʼs amazing,ʼ Christoph shouted as we bumped down the ramp into the daylight. ʻThanks to all the aluminium bodywork the car is much lighter than the later Stuttgart-made cars, and you can really feel it.ʼ
Gmünd is small and pretty much unchanged since the time Porsche was located here so looking at some prints of old promotional photos it was easy to work out where they were taken. It was a very powerful emotion to drive the car through the medieval town gate, just as Ferdinand and Ferry had done seventy years ago.
Ferdinand, after pretty much single-handedly changing the worldʼs auto industry, would pass away in the spring of 1951, just a few months before four of the lightweight Gmünd cars were entered in that year ʼs Le Mans, netting a class win and setting into motion a motorsport tradition that is absolutely unparalleled.
Nor could he have imagined that his grandson, then just a teenager, would go on to design the 911 – or that the name ʻPorscheʼ would become synonymous with the word sportscar. And it all started right here! CP
Contact:
Porsche Automuseum Helmut Pfeifhofer www.auto-museum.at