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This will shake up the ranking a little bit. Porsche 911 with VIN number 300003 is also out there. It is owned by mr. Freisinger in Germany. I'm not sure if he wanted 1,5 or 2,5 million for it, or maybe the price is a rumor and he doesn't want to sell at all. Did not see the car yet, but it was confirmed by two well informed people.
Would be nice to see a picture of this car, so if anyone has one, please post.
Erik
Nice one Erik, since #300001 and #300002 are ( considered) prototypes, is this the first production 901? ( lowest number anyway) i believe #300007 was the first one finished?
So what is the real first 901? :)
for the right €€€€ freisinger sells everything ....Quote:
Originally Posted by kouwenhoven
unless he does not like you...
Very cool, Erik. I sure wish I had the contacts you do...
Hi Erik,
It was nice meeting you in person at RRV.
#300003 is a prototype cabriolet, not production. Interesting to note, the first two prototype cabriolets were once owned by Mr. Freisinger, 300003 and 13360.
Jay
300005
Hello Jay
Nice meeting you too. Very good that you drove your car to RRV instead of turning it into a trailer queen.
It's an interesting discussion which cars were prototypes and which were production cars. According to Lewandowski, who based his book on Porsche-info, there were 13 prototypes, all starting with VIN number '13'. And then there were two series cars, number 300001 and 300002. Maybe you or Bob have better info, because Lewandowski's book is somewhat off on a few other subjects too and I trust Bob more on this subject. If so, please let us know.
Erik
wrong. All infos Lewandowski wrote in his 901 book are based on Aichele's book, which first came out in 1993.Quote:
Originally Posted by kouwenhoven
Lewandowsky copy-pasted Aichele's detailed infos about the prototyps for his newer coffee-table book, with Aichele's OK.
Aichele's book was the first one being based entirely on Porsche-Archiv infos. He was still able to interview Bott, Hanstein and Ferry, which died in 94, 96 and 98, respectively. He also talked with Falk, Hensler and Mezger for his book.
Years ago I translated these once hard-to-get (back then available in german language only) infos about the prototyps from Aichele's book for Bob and thats how Bob initially got the infos for the US.
BTW Jay is right. According to Aichele, there were several 300xxx which were prototyps, even they had 300xxx numbers, and not 13xxx. They were also more 13xxx produced then the currently 13+1 expl. known and documented. As we all know, of all 13xxx only 13327 and 13360 are currently alive. 300001 and 300002 are prototyps and do exists on photos and had plates S-UN 478 and S-UN 476. Both were sold by the factory, 001 in early 1966 and 002 in mid-1968. 300003 was probably noted as a prototyp and so 300007 the first produced 901. At least this is my guess while studying the infos and production timeline.
Hi Erik,
Karim pretty much nailed it. Lewandowski’s book is based on the works of Aichele, Frère and Ludvigsen.
Lewandowski writes from the point of view of “the long, difficult labor and internal difficulties” of the development process but credits Aichele for the research.
The source material of most of my readings can usually be traced back to Aichele. In fact, most of this post can be traced back to Tobias Aichele.
Aichele only lists and describes 13 prototypes in his book because during his extensive research he states, “These few cars define the history of the 911 up to the delivery of the first production cars. Naturally, there were more than the listed 13.” This part of his research was focused on the successor to the 356 and all the new design changes and challenges. Variants like cabriolet, targa, roadster, 912 would flow “naturally” from the new platform. Aichele documents 6 early variants of the open air design. Also, in an October 20, 1961 memo to Reutter notes, “….that in the design (T8) of the exterior skin, the vehicle also should be buildable as an open air car. “ We now know that time and money constraints (and maybe some other things) would put the production Cabrio on hold for many years. The Targa however, was introduced at the 1965 Frankfurt Show.
However slow, we know that work never stopped on open air 911’s. 13360 is truly a treasure and I hope to see it in person someday. Aichele devotes a chapter to the subject of “Open 911.”
On the topic of what is a prototype, can really only be verified a couple of ways. The challenge is Porsche had their own convention and even that was flexible. For example, beginning with the very first chassis number, the cars were known as the so-called “Series 0,” which remained in production until July 1967. This designation often leads to confusion, as the standard adopted sequence by the auto industry is as follows: the first cars are hand-built prototypes, followed by a pre-production series for development tests. Next come the “0 series or zero series” cars which incorporate production parts whenever possible. These cars, usually built in a series of fifty, are built using production tooling. In the case of Porsche 911, however, “0 series” does not refer to these but rather the entire series prior to a later Series A (such as for example 356, followed by 356A). Today the identifiers in the car industry have been unified to avoid confusion.
As Karim pointed out, 300001 and 300002 are documented pre-production/test cars. We also know 300007 and 300003 were produced before 001 and 002 but not mentioned by Aichele. It’s my opinion that both 003 and 007 were pre-production/test cars and by not being mention by Aichele indicates a variant.
I think we need another researcher like Aichele to fill in the blanks and pick up where he left off. Deep dive journalism is rare indeed.
Karim was kind enough to translate an interesting article by German Journalist Wolfgang Blaube. Check it out.
http://www.early911sregistry.org/for...ighlight=13360
Jay
300005
Thanks for all of the leg work gentlemen. Fascinating, geeky stuff. Even I get bored reading it.
Sooo... what's the oldest production car known to exist that wasn't used as a prototype or race car?
Well its interesting to see from the a copy of the Build book from Bob Fleming that 300003 was the second production made car being built on the 15th of September. As you all may know the first one was 300007. However it also states that 300003 had a Blaupunkt radio fitted in the car whilst 007, 001, and 002 did not. Now I'm not sure if this is because 003 was going to a customer or not, but it doesn't make that much sense to me at least to spec up a prototype with a radio-unless there was some purpose to that. Perhaps maybe 007, 001 and 002 were the prototypes. I don't know for sure. There is no evidence from the build book that 300003 is a Cabriolet as was suggested above. This probably would have been stipulated in the build book-as it was for 13360 when it had an engine fitted in January 1965. Is there any evidence anywhere to show that 300003 was a prototype cabriolet? Not saying that it wasn't, just would like to see the evidence that's all..