To Be OFFERED AT AUCTION at RM Sothebys' Monterey event, 15 - 17
August 2019.
Estimate:
Estimate Available Upon Request
- The antecedent of Porsche's historical evolution
- The first and sole remainder of the three examples believed
completed
- Personal car driven by both Prof. Dr. h.c. Ferdinand Porsche
and his son Ferry Porsche
- The oldest car to ever wear Porsche's iconic wide-font script
badge
- Owned for 46 years by the successful private racing driver Otto
Math�
- Raced in Austria from 1949 to 1953; class win at the 1951
Austrian Alpenfahrt
- 70-year documented chain of three private owners since the
Porsche family
- Sympathetically freshened to highlight its extreme
originality
- Recently and thoroughly inspected by Porsche specialist Andy
Prill
- The most historically important Porsche ever publicly
offered
A DREAM DEFERRED
There can be no disputing that Porsche is among the most important
marques in post-war racing history, winning countless sports car
and endurance events while developing one of the most celebrated
model lines ever conceived. Even seasoned enthusiasts, however,
have rarely considered the existence of a genetic forebear of the
fabled brand that predated the first Porsche 356 by nearly a
decade.
The heart and soul of the company's fantastic history, of course,
can be traced to the founder, Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Porsche. The
eldest Porsche famously cut his teeth at Austro-Daimler and
Mercedes-Benz before engineering some of the interwar era's
greatest rear-engine creations, including the dominant Auto Union
race cars and, at the other end of the spectrum, the Volkswagen
Type 1 Beetle.
Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Porsche was a fiery and uncompromising
personality who regularly challenged corporate boards with
difficult ideas, one of the reasons his r�sum� consisted of so many
different stops. In September 1938, during his successful
consultancy with the early state-run Volkswagen, Prof. Dr. Porsche
proposed a sports car version of the Beetle, then known as the
KdF-Wagen. As evidenced by Porsche design drawings, the Type 114
was imagined with three different displacements, highlighted by a
mid/rear engine placement just ahead of the rear axle. A far cry
from the state's vision of a car for the common man, Porsche's
sports car was rejected by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront board, and the
idea was shelved.
The Type 114 obviously made an impression, though�two weeks later
Volkswagen itself commissioned Porsche to formulate a similar
solution that would address the Beetle's poorly performing narrow
tires. VW had built several versions of the KdF already, including
the military-grade K�belwagen and Schwimmwagen, and the proposed
sports car was to be the tenth different body design applied to the
KdF's Type 60 chassis. The concept was therefore dubbed the Type
60K10, though Porsche internally classified the project as the Type
64.
Under the supervision of Erwin Komenda, Karl Froelich drafted
formal plans that were then developed into a wooden scale model,
which was wind-tunnel tested at Stuttgart University by Josef
Mickl. These same three Austrians had contributed to Porsche's Auto
Union grand prix cars and the KdF-Wagen. They would soon become
major forces in the creation of the Cisitalia grand prix race car
and Porsche's own 356 and 550 models.
BERLIN TO ROME
Very similar in profile, the Type 114 and the Type 64 exterior
drawings are easily recognizable as the basis of the Gm�nd 356
coupe that was to follow, and therefore can be viewed as the
earliest expression of Porsche's singular design evolution. Despite
this flurry of activity, both ideas seemed destined to remain in a
draftsman's file, were it not for the announcement in the spring of
1939 of a 940-mile road race from Berlin to Rome to be run that
September. Several manufacturers lined up to compete in this
public-relations showcase of the Axis pact, and Dr. Porsche
accordingly received an order from the National Socialist Motor
Corps (NSKK) to produce three Sport KdF-Wagen examples, and the
Type 64 was resuscitated.
Though unconfirmed, it is believed that Reutter Karosserie was
retained to build alloy coachwork for the Type 64, which featured a
narrow two-seat cockpit, wheel spats front and rear, and a dual
spare-wheel compartment under the front trunk lid (a contingency
for the Beetle's easily damaged tires). A split windshield and
sliding-door windows completed the lightweight body, which was
smoothly fastened to the outer skin in a series of more than 2,000
rivets.
As the third owner was impressed to discover, the Type 64's build
was more characteristic of contemporaneous aircraft specifications
than anything commonly found on a Volkswagen Beetle. Though the
chassis began with the KdF-Wagen's basic layout of a steel-pressed
backbone, it was modified in shape and flanked by rectangular
tubular frames made of aircraft-gauge duralumin. To these frames
were welded a floor pan and underbody made of lightweight
alloy.
The standard 985 cc VW engine was rebuilt with dual Solex
carburetors, larger valves, and higher compression, combining to
develop 32-40 hp (substantially improving upon the standard factory
output of 23.5 hp). A low curb weight of just 1,346 pounds helped
the torquey motor deliver fast starts, as noted by several people
who have driven the Type 64. With the first example completed in
August 1939, the advanced race car would have been well on its way
to a position on the Berlin-Rome starting grid had World War II not
broken out within the following month.
THE WAR YEARS
As the property of Volkswagen, the first completed Type 64, chassis
no. 38/41, was appropriated by Dr. Bodo Lafferentz, the head of the
German Labour Front, although he damaged the car in an accident in
1939. In a board meeting in late September 1939, Ferry Porsche
proposed that the company continue building the second and third
cars for testing and experimentation purposes despite the race's
cancellation, and the second of the proposed three examples was
completed three months later. This car surely suffered the most
ignominious fate when, in the waning stages of the war, it was
commandeered by members of the U.S. Seventh Army's "Rainbow"
division, who cut off the roof and drove the resulting "cabriolet"
into the ground, leaving it as scrap after blowing the engine.
In June 1940 the third body was completed but apparently not
mounted on any chassis until after Lafferentz's accident in the
first car. At this point 38/41 was repaired at Porsche.
Corroborating this account is correspondence from Math� to Porsche
of numerous concerns with the Type 64 after he purchased it. These
complaints accurately refer to the damage sustained in the accident
and the subsequent repairs made by Porsche. Regardless, 38/41 would
become the sole surviving example of the three planned cars, and it
lives on today as proudly offered here.
For much of the remainder of the war, this Type 64 was used by
Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Porsche in his travels around Germany as one of
the regime's most important engineers. He was regularly chauffeured
by his driver, Josef Goldinger, from his home in Zell am See and
once made a trip from Berlin to the Volkswagen headquarters in
Wolfsburg, during which the car averaged an impressive 83 mph. By
1944 Germany was relocating most of its war production
infrastructure to escape the wrath of the Allied bombing campaign,
and Dr. Porsche's eponymous workshop was famously moved to Gm�nd,
Austria, and his Type 64 along with it.
In the power grab that ...for more information please contact the
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