Porsche No1 to be displayed at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance

By Simona Alina
Article file under http://www.topspeed.com/

Porsche will unveil at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, the Porsche No. 1, the first two-seat sports ever built by Porsche.



This legendary sports car and the lynchpin of Porsche’s design philosophy began life in June 1947 as engineering project Type 356 in the Porsche design office in Gmünd, Austria. Officially known as Type 356-001, Ferry Porsche’s design concept took shape through the leadership of Karl Rabe, Porsche’s talented chief designer who worked alongside Ferry’s father to develop the original Volkswagen.



It is powered by a Volkswagen air-cooled, 1.31-liter flat-four engine that delivers just 25 horsepower at 3,300 rpm. The Porsche team enlarged the bore from 70 to 75 mm, increased compression from 5.8:1 to 7.0:1, and added slightly larger inlet valves and ports and twin carburetors, boosting output to between 35 and 40 horsepower.