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      05-13-2019, 10:59 AM   #1
Grumpy Old Man
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Oldest surviving Porsche prototype, from 1939, set to be auctioned off

https://driving.ca/porsche/auto-news...-auctioned-off

Possibly the most significant Porsche sports car ever built, a 1939 race car known as the Type 64, built for the Berlin-Rome race, is set to go up for auction this August.

Before the Second World War, while Ferdinand Porsche was tasked by the Nazis with building an economical “people’s car,” his son, “Ferry” Porsche, took it upon himself to design a race car Germany could use in competition.

What he came up with was the Type 64, an aluminum-bodied sports car utilizing aircraft engineering and aerodynamics, but based on the KdF-Wagen, the prototype car that would become the Beetle.

Powering the Type 64 was the same flat-four found in the KdF-Wagen, but with compression bumped up so it could make 32 horsepower; and with the rear axle ratios changed to allow for a top speed of 173.5 km/h.

A trio of prototypes were built, and when then-Volkswagen boss Bodo Lafferentz damaged the first one (number 38/41) in an accident, it was rebuilt into the current vehicle you see here.

For political reasons, the car was still called a KdF-Wagen, and this one specifically, ‘Sports Car 3,’ is the only surviving original example of the three cars.

After the war, some rotten Americans got hold of the second car (38/42), chopped the roof off, and drove it until it died, then threw it away. Eventually, the parts from that vehicle were built into a “replica” of the second vehicle.

38/41 was kept in the Porsche family all throughout the war, and when it re-established itself in 1946, Ferry Porsche himself installed the raised “PORSCHE” letters on the nose, making this the first ever car to wear the badge.

Today it is presented in a preserved state, just as it was when Porsche put his name on the nose. RM Sotheby’s will auction this vehicle off at its Monterey Car Week auction, which runs August 15 to 17 in Monterey, California.
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