The origins of one of the most famous vehicles of all time, the Porsche 911, one of whose notable ancestors is the focus model of this article, the 356 B, soared at the end of the 40’s, with Dr. Ferdinand Porsche and his son Ferry in jail through the defeat of Germany in the second world war. In such difficult circumstances, with great shortage of materials (many factories had been seized, as were the materials), the 356/001 project grew in the Gmünd factory, an old sawmill. This model made its debut in the great prize of Switzerland in 1948, and a little bit later, it won the Innsbruck competition.
Porsche got the support of the Swiss car salesman Rupprecht von Senger who commissioned the first 356 models, built with aluminum plates modeled by hand and with many Volkswagen pieces. With respect to the benefits of the vehicle, the fact that with 40 HP it was capable of reaching 130 km/h (80.77 mph) initiated a large number of orders for the 356.
The Gmünd factory stayed small and Porsche returned to Stuttgart in 1950. At that time they began to make improvements to the vehicle along with giving it steel bodywork instead of the original aluminum (in the new factory there was no equipment to weld aluminum!). The new model was named PRE-A or T0, which is the first official 356, manufactured until 1955.
Subsequently, in the Frankfurt room in 1955 they presented an improved model named 356A or T1, manufactured until 1959 with a total of 20,000 units (of different versions of the T1-T4).
In 1959 a new model named 356B (version T5) appeared with a handful of both mechanical and esthetic improvements, such as new and bigger fenders, more vertically positioned headlights (and therefore modified fins). In 1961 the T6 (object of this article) appeared, with additional changes, like the second ventilation grill in the motor cover, as we can verify in the Bburago miniature, which appeared in the market in the late 90’s of the last century.
This miniature has openable doors and hood (where we can appreciate the spare wheel in the interior), as well as the motor cover (where we can appreciate the motor certainly with a level of detail), as well as the turning of the steering wheel with the turning of the wheels. In general it is very true to the original model except for some details for the expert observer, such as the absence of side view mirrors or the 8 holes in the rims, where there are 10 in the actual model.
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