Photo: Porsche
This year German car builder Porsche is celebrating 70 years of car production. In fact, this year marks the 70th anniversary of the moment the first vehicle to bear the Porsche name was registered on June 8, 1948: the 356 No.1 Roadster.
As the official birthday of the brand approaches, Porsche revealed on Wednesday that it has been working on a very special project: replicating the iconic car using the building techniques of the age. That’s because Porsche used same materials and techniques that were used by Friedrich Weber.
The new No. 1 was built from scratch. At first, a 3D scan of the existing model had to be made. Then, the resulting scan was superimposed onto the original design drawings from 1948, which also had been previously scanned.
The manual build of the car did not start until all the original photos, drawings, and journals from that era had been studied. The final step was carving a life-size model of the car from a block of rigid foam by means of a computer-assisted milling machine. Based on it, an aluminum replica of the original was constructed.
What came out at the end of the entire build process – a process detailed in the document attached below – is a true copy of the original car. It features no engine, and its rear axle consists of a simple pipe. The front axle, complete with the steering system and wheel, was scavenged from a Volkswagen Beetle.
In all, the build process took around eight months. Now that it’s ready, the replica would be sent on a world tour that would start on May 31 in Berlin at the DRIVE exhibition.
For the remainder of the year, Porsche will tour the world with both the original 356 No. 1 Roadster and with the recently made copy of it.
The 1948 Porsche 356 Roadster was created by Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche, the son of the company's founder. It was equipped with a four-cylinder, air-cooled, rear-mounted engine. The very first road-certified 356 entered in a race in Innsbruck where it won its class.
The new No. 1 was built from scratch. At first, a 3D scan of the existing model had to be made. Then, the resulting scan was superimposed onto the original design drawings from 1948, which also had been previously scanned.
The manual build of the car did not start until all the original photos, drawings, and journals from that era had been studied. The final step was carving a life-size model of the car from a block of rigid foam by means of a computer-assisted milling machine. Based on it, an aluminum replica of the original was constructed.
What came out at the end of the entire build process – a process detailed in the document attached below – is a true copy of the original car. It features no engine, and its rear axle consists of a simple pipe. The front axle, complete with the steering system and wheel, was scavenged from a Volkswagen Beetle.
In all, the build process took around eight months. Now that it’s ready, the replica would be sent on a world tour that would start on May 31 in Berlin at the DRIVE exhibition.
For the remainder of the year, Porsche will tour the world with both the original 356 No. 1 Roadster and with the recently made copy of it.
The 1948 Porsche 356 Roadster was created by Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche, the son of the company's founder. It was equipped with a four-cylinder, air-cooled, rear-mounted engine. The very first road-certified 356 entered in a race in Innsbruck where it won its class.
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