Restored back to life

Porsche might never have discovered this 901 – briefly the name for the 911 – had it not been for reality TV series Trödeltrupp, a kind of German Cash In The Attic.

An elderly East German guy got in touch with news of an old 911 in a barn, and the show contacted Alexander Klein at the Porsche Museum. The VIN number, 300057, made him stop like his lottery numbers just came in. “I knew this was a very, very early car,” he says – actually car number 55, and believed to be the last-ever 901.

Third keeper Bernd Ibold had run it as a service car for his garage business to reach customers, worked on it himself, and couldn’t get parts in East Germany. It was in a sorry state and needed restoration. “We wanted an ‘empathetic’ restoration to reflect this car’s history,” explains Klein. “In those days they basically improved car-by-car, so we tried to figure out how it would have been by looking at earlier and later cars and asking owners and experts for input – we know it is not only us. For instance, the engine grille was missing, but should have been higher. We found one online and had the seller measure it. There are six strips of trim on the seats, not five on later cars; it used leatherette instead of rubber between the body and fender, which would deteriorate and rust, but we needed it. We even left welding traces.”

A second early 911 was used as a donor, and the 901 was sympathetically restored under the guidance of master mechanic Kuno Werner, whose passion makes up for his faltering English and my pathetic German as he talks round the slightly different door handles, the early flower-like wheel mountings, and an ashtray with a wider central hole for cigars, not cigarettes as per later models.

After a two-and-a-half year restoration, Porsche invited Ibold to lift a sheet off the finished car in the workshop. “We were nervous and asked, ‘Do you remember this car?’,” says Klein. “Bernd remembered all the details. He was close to tears. We’re still in touch.”