Page 13 - Porsche Decades sample pages

Porsche 356 Beutler Cabriolet and Gmünd coupe shown at the 1949 Geneva Salon. Ferry Porsche is third from the left, sister Louise Piëch second from the right. Bernhard Blank is in the middle.
panels (including panels that served as the cabin floors). The boxes were relatively easy to make and served as passages for control cables, wiring and support for the doors. Integration of body panels with the chassis made for a ‘unit-body’ construction familiar to most modern cars. Suspension and steering followed standard Volkswagen practice, but with improved shock absorbers and hydraulic brakes from Lockheed that appeared later in the run of cars produced in Austria. A further important decision was to mount the engine behind the rear wheels, again in standard Volkswagen form, as a way to create a bit of additional space for luggage or occasional rear seating.
The smooth and elegant body shape was styled by Erwin Komenda with guidance from Ferry Porsche and followed styling elements dating to the Volkswagen 60K10 as well as the original Type 60 Volkswagen. An important element for Ferry Porsche was the styling of the front fenders and visibility from the driver’s seat. He wanted to assist the driver in knowing where
the front wheels were positioned in a turn. This, along with the sloping hood line diving below the tops of the front fenders, remains a part of Porsche’s design language to the present day. The same can be said of the sloping ‘fastback’ rear body section which makes a gentle and continuous curve from the roofline to the engine cover and down to the rear bumper. Aside from the deeply inset wheels, partially covered at the rear, the basic shape is recognizable to anyone with a passing familiarity with the modern 911.
For the first series of cars, made in Austria, the bodies were crafted in aluminum alloy. They were shaped and hammered by hand over a wooden ‘buck’ or form. The aluminum body and the small size of the car made for a featherweight package by modern standards. Performance was reasonably good even with itsVolkswagen-basedengineproducingonly40horsepowerwith dual carburetors. Dr. Eberan von Eberhorst assisted with work on valve drive and combustion chamber design in the effort to
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1940s PORSCHE DECADES