PORSCHE

356 B

The Porsche 356 B was the third major evolution of the 356, the model that launched the Porsche company. The original 356 was conceived by Ferry Porsche and clothed in a sleek aerodynamic body penned by Erwin Komenda, the same engineer who had shaped the Volkswagen Beetle with which the 356 shared its air-cooled, rear-engined, four-cylinder architecture. The first cars were hand-built in aluminium at Gmund in Austria in 1948 before production moved to Zuffenhausen, Germany, in 1950 and switched to steel bodies. By the time the Porsche 356 B arrived for the 1960 model year, the car had matured enormously. Launched on the T5 body, the Porsche 356 B brought raised headlamps, a higher front bumper, larger over-riders and bigger brakes, giving it a more upright, more modern face than the earlier 356 A. In mid-1962 the Porsche 356 B adopted the revised T6 body, recognisable by its twin engine-lid grilles, an external fuel filler in the right front wing and a larger rear window. Power came from the 1.6-litre flat-four in a ladder of tunes, from the gentle 60 hp Normal up to the howling 130 hp Carrera 2 with its four-cam engine. Offered as a coupe, a Cabriolet and the rakish Roadster, the Porsche 356 B sold better than any 356 before it, with 31,441 built in just five years, and is today a blue-chip classic and the friendly face of early Porsche collecting.