We Drove 356/1, the First Street-Legal Porsche Ever Made

At dinner the night before the drive, I was sat across from Kuno Werner, lead mechanic at the Porsche Museum. "Are you nervous to have us all drive your car?" I asked. Werner scanned the table of eager journalists and responded, "Yes."

I probably should have been more nervous to be handed the keys. It's hard to put a price on a car like the 356/1, but the Porsche Museum curator placed its value at nine figures. So I did feel some responsibility to keep the little bathtub in one piece, but mostly I was just thrilled. It's so pretty and sweet, all dapper in silver and red. Its tires are barely bigger than those on an e-bike, its seats are about the size of the pull-down jump seats in a '90s pickup truck. It doesn't seem like a car so much as a movie prop. It seemed like it wanted to be driven, and I wanted to drive it.

The history of 356/1 is less murky than some prototypes, but it can get confusing. Often referred to as the first Porsche car, it's really the first road-legal Porsche car. It's the first car built by Porsche as a car company under the Porsche name. Before that, Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche did design work for Volkswagen and built racecars like the turtley Type 64 in 1939, but they weren't "Porsche cars." Originally planned as a VW sports car, the 356/1 sits on a tube chassis with lightly modified VW chassis components under its hand-hammered aluminum shell. The 1.1-liter engine pumped out a whopping 35 horsepower. Somewhere along the line, the decision was made for this car to roll out under the Porsche brand name. Porsche had the 356/1 certified for road use on June 8, 1948, and the company uses that date, and this car, as its starting point.

For 356/1 though, the path to greatness was not a straight shot. Porsche was experimenting with various engine layouts for the 356, and while this prototype's mid-engine format is exotic (and gives surprising luggage space both front and rear), it was hard to cool, made for a notchy and complex shifter linkage, and left very little room for the passengers. The rear engine would win for ease of production, and Porsche was developing those cars at almost the same time as he was working on 356/1. As soon as he knew which direction he wanted to pursue, he sold the mid-engine car to fund the production of the rear-engine versions.