CarBrandLogos archive · Porsche · 1939

Porsche64

Three streamlined cars built for a race that never happened.

Photo: pelican-actor · CC BY 2.0

The story

A defining chapter in Porsche history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Porsche 64, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Origins

The Type 64 predates Porsche as a car manufacturer. In 1939 Ferdinand Porsche's design office was engaged on the KdF-Wagen, the car that became the Volkswagen Beetle, and a long-distance road race from Berlin to Rome was planned to celebrate the political alignment of the two capitals. Porsche built cars for it using KdF-Wagen running gear beneath an aerodynamic aluminium body developed with wind-tunnel work, all-enveloping and startlingly slippery for its date.

Porsche 64 rear · pelican-actor · CC BY 2.0

Design and engineering

Three were completed. The race was cancelled when war began, and the cars were used as fast personal transport instead, Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche both driving them. One was destroyed after the war, one survived.

In production

It was never a Porsche production model and it does not carry the engineering that would define the marque a decade later. What it does carry is the method: take an ordinary rear-engined economy car's mechanicals, wrap them in a body shaped for speed, and see what happens. That is a fairly precise description of the 356 that followed in 1948, which is why the Type 64 is usually treated as the family's starting point.

Technical specification