The Sauter Porsche – one of one

One car on display as part of the special single-marque exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum entitled ‘The Porsche Effect’ is this modified 1951 Porsche 356 known as the “Sauter Porsche.” While the car’s history does not include any major racing victories, it is a remarkable story and the significance of its impact on Porsche design is undeniable.

In 1951, Heinrich Sauter, the young heir of the German Hahn + Kolb toolmaking firm based in Stuttgart, purchased Porsche 356 cabriolet chassis #10359. The rear-engine, rear-wheel drive 356 powered by an air-cooled flat four-cylinder engine was Porsche’s first post-war production car. Sauter’s car was powered by a 1300 cubic centimeter (CC) (79 cubic inch) engine advertised to develop 44 horsepower, plenty of power to push along the lightweight 1290-pound machine.

Sauter was a racer who competed mainly in hill climbs and rallies, and he wanted more performance so he contacted Karosserie (coachbuilder) Klenk in Frankfurt Germany to modify his 356. Klenk had close ties to the Porsche factory and installed a new larger Porsche 1500S (1500 CC or 91 cubic inches) engine which developed 55 horsepower, but the important change was the new steel low-profile bodywork.

 

 

 

With input from the factory, Klenk built a body with “suicide” (front opening) doors, a new panel to fill in for the missing convertible top, air ducts to cool the front brakes, small competition windscreens, ducts at the rear to allow air out of the engine compartment and an external fuel tank filler.      

Records indicate that Sauter raced the car sparingly before his sold it back to the Porsche factory and during 1952 it was raced across Europe by Frenchman Francois Picard, before it was sold to American Jack Armstrong. Armstrong shipped the car to the Unified States and it was raced on the West Coast in 1953 by Stan Mullin in SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) events at Santa Barbara and Long Beach. Armstrong himself drove the Sauter 356 at the August 1953 races held at Moffett Field Naval Air Station near Mountain View California.

 

 

 

By the time of the SCCA Orange Empire National Sports Car Races held at March Air Field in November 1953, Mullin and Armstrong were listed as partners in the ownership of the special-bodied Porsche. Mullin became the owner/driver in 1954, and after a single appearance at the March races held at Minter Field in Shafter California, the Sauter Porsche dropped from sight.

 

Porsche factory photo of a 356 America

 

While not a great success on the racetrack, the ground-breaking styling of the Sauter Porsche inspired three subsequent Porsche 356 designs. In 1952, Porsche built a small series (less than 25) of cars destined for the North American market known as the “356 America Roadster.” Clad with an aluminum body built by Dresden-based Gläser-Karosserie with cut-down doors and a removable windshield, the “America” a true roadster with no permanent top or roll-up windows weighed 1330 pounds. However, the cost of production was higher than expected and reportedly coachbuilder Glaser lost money on each body. In the end the high-priced stripped down racing “America” sports car was a dismal commercial failure.  

 

 

 

In late 1954 in his New York City showroom designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Porsche importer/dealer Max Hoffman unveiled the iconic “356 Speedster” which featured the design elements shown in the Sauter Porsche, namely a 1500 CC engine, a stripped down interior with no roll-up side windows and a cut-down windshield. Equipped with a minimal convertible top,  the “Speedster” was an immediate hit with over 4,100 Porsche 356 and 356A Speedsters built before production ended in 1959.

The Speedster appealed particularly to Hollywood celebrities. Before he traded it in on his Porsche 550 Spyder death car, actor James Dean owned and raced a white 1955 Porsche 1500 Super Speedster, chassis # 80126, and won one race at Palm Springs in March of 1955. “The King of Cool” Steve McQueen owned and raced a black 1959 Porsche 1600 Super Speedster serial number 84855 equipped with Rudge alloy knock-off wheels and won a SCCA novice race at the Goleta airport course on Memorial Day 1959.

 

 

The final Porsche production car that can trace its origins back to the Sauter Porsche is the 1955 Porsche Continental, the brainchild of North American Porsche importer Max Hoffman who thought that a plusher Porsche would appeal to the American market. In addition to a plusher interior and high-quality convertible top, the bodywork of the Continental, built by Stuttgart’s’ Karosserie Reutter, was accented by “Continental” in gold script on the front fenders, “turbine style” wheel covers and whitewall tires.  Within the first year however, the name of the car was changed to “European” reportedly after the Ford Motor Company explained that they held the rights to the “Continental” trademark for automobiles.    

The history of the Sauter Porsche itself fast forwards to 1982 when an Indianapolis physician Dr. Ray Knight bought a strange “Porsche/Volkswagen hybrid” from a rural eastern Indiana junkyard. Reportedly the car had been stored outside since 1958 and was fitted with an incorrect albeit blown engine, but Knight paid $4,500 for the car and then set out to research its history and restore the car.

Knight tracked down the car’s provenance through interviews with Sauter, Klenk and Mullin and spent nearly 4,000 man-hours to bring the car up to the level of finish we see today. Several years ago Knight sold the car to collector Phil White, and Dr. Knight donated half of the “high six figure” proceeds to his alma mater Wabash College. Under Mr. White’s ownership the Sauter Porsche won an award as the “best open 356” at the Porsche Club of America 2017 Werks Reunion in Monterey California.  

Color photographs by the author

An original Porsche 550 Spyder

The “Porsche Effect” exhibit at the Petersen Automotive Museum certainly would not have been complete without the inclusion of this example of the Porsche 550 Spyder, Porsche’s first production race car.

Inspired by the success of the Helm Glockler racing team's success with their Porsche 356, the Porsche factory began to develop a production racing car as project number 550 under the leadership of factory engineer Wilhelm Hild. In addition to later working on the development of the Porsche 911 passenger car, Hild also oversaw the Porsche 804 Formula One Grand Prix program as the manager of the competition department.   

1953 Paris Motor Show

Courtesy 550.com

The prototype Porsche 550 Spyder was first shown to the public in October 1953 at the Mondial de l'Automobile) (World of the Automobile) also known as the Paris Motor Show. Before the show, an internal Porsche memorandum announced that “this is the first time we are presenting a racing car that is not for sale as the main attraction at a motor show. Whether the cars will be delivered in small numbers to special customers for racing depends on next year’s racing season. We are therefore not able to quote a price today.”

Two 550 Coupes with bodies built by Karosseriewerk (body shop) Weidenhausen in Frankfurt were entered for the 1953 LeMans 24-hour endurance race and they both completed 247 laps and finished first and second in the 1.5 liter class. Later in the 1953 Carrera Panamericana (Mexican Road Race) two 550 coupes and two spyders were entered in the 1.6 liter and smaller sports car class. Both spyders and one of the coupes failed to finish, but the remaining coupe won its class albeit nearly six hours of accumulated time behind the winning Lancia D24 driven by Juan Fangio which was equipped with an engine twice the size of the Porsche engine.

The first two production Porsche 500 cars differed from their successors in a number of ways, primarily insofar as they were powered by modified Volkswagen 1500 Super engines. The third car, 500-003 was fitted with a new 1.5-liter, four-camshaft, four-cylinder engine equipped with two spark plugs per cylinder and twin down-draft carburetors.  Designed by Ernst Fuhrmann, the flat engine known as the 547 project developed 110 horsepower plenty of power for the 1400-pound car.

The chassis was built of seamless steel tubing with four-wheel fully independent torsion bar suspension with drum brakes and 16-inch Continental tires covered by an all-aluminum alloy body. The early series 550 Porsches were fitted with “flat-front” noses and exaggerated tail fins built by either the Weidenhausen or Weinsberg coach builders, but starting with chassis 550-016, all the sloped-front, smooth-tail bodies were built by Wendler in Reutlingen Germany. Eventually at total  of 90 production model 550s were built - three coupes and 87 spyders.  

Throughout history, Porsche 550 Spyders have attracted celebrity ownership; Ralph Lauren owns the restored chassis # 550-0061, while comedian Jerry Seinfeld reportedly owns several Porsche including #550-003 coupe, and he sold the unrestored # 550-0060 at auction in 2016 for over $5 million.

However the most famous (an infamous) Porsche 550 Spyder was chassis # 550-0055 finished in silver with red trim and red interior was delivered to actor James Dean on September 21, 1955.  Dean traded in his white Porsche 356 Speedster towards the purchase of the new machine at John von Neumann's Competition Motors on Vine Street in Hollywood.  

Dean took his new 550 Spyder to the shop of custom painter Dean Jeffries who applied the provisional race number 130 in washable black paint on the doors and across the front and rear of the car. Jeffries also painted “Little Bastard” in script across the lower rear deck lid - this was not the nickname of the car, rather it was nickname adopted by Dean, allegedly after Jack Warner the head of the Warner Brothers studio called him a “little bastard” after Dean refused to vacate a temporary trailer on the Warner lot after the completion of the filming of ‘East of Eden.’

In his first week of ownership, Dean had two minor incidents which dented the front of his new Porsche, then on September 30 1955 while enroute to the SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) sanctioned Salinas Optimist Club race at the Salinas Airport, Dean struck another car head-on at the junction of Route 466 and Route 41 near Cholame, California. Dean just 24 years old with only three motion pictures to his credit was killed instantly.  

Dean’s wrecked Porsche was purchased for $876 from Dean’s insurance company, Pacific Indemnity,  by amateur racer Dr. William Eschrich, who stripped the wreckage of its type 547 engine, transmission, steering, brakes and other mechanical parts, then sold the body shell and frame to famed Hollywood automotive customizer George Barris.

The Dean death car on display

courtesy of 550.com

After partially straightening the body, the “King of Kustomizers” realized the car was beyond restoration and he loaned the mangled body shell to the National Safety Council for display at car shows the across the United States in order to raise motorists' awareness about highway safety with a sign entitled "this accident could have been avoided."  The hulk of Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder disappeared in 1960 while it was being transported from Miami, Florida, back to Barris’ shop near Los Angeles and it has never been seen again.  

The car shown at the Petersen Automotive Museum is the final production Porsche 550 Spyder, chassis #550-090, built in 1956. The car’s first owner was Willet H. Brown, a pioneer in television broadcasting who had operated the Hillcrest Motor Company Cadillac dealership in Beverly Hills before he joined Don Lee, Incorporated, a broadcasting and automotive conglomerate. Brown, who in 1956 owned the Los Angeles television station KCAL, sold the car after he had driven it a scant 634 miles.

a scanned excerpt of the author's copy

of the June 1971 Road &Track article

After passing through several hands, the 550 Spyder wound up on the sales lot of Hermosa Beach Porsche dealer Vasek Polak in 1963 where it was purchased by a man known only as “Hank.” George Sebald who ran a body shop which specialized in Porsche repairs later purchased the car in 1967 with the intention of restoring it.  Sebald’s unrestored 550 was the subject of a ‘salon’ article in the June 1971 issue of Road & Track magazine as it was test driven by retired racer Paul “Richie” Ginther, who had won a number of SCCA West Coast Championship races in 1956 driving one of dealer John von Neumann’s 550 Spyders.     

Sebald realized the tremendous originality of the car and later “flipped” Porsche # 550-090 to another owner who then sold the car to the noted Porsche collector George Reilly for a reported $4,500, and Reilly owned the car for nearly thirty years. In 2010 the car appeared at shows with its ownership attributed to Indian liquor billionaire and Formula one team owner Dr. Vijay Mallya, and became part of his 30-car museum in Sausalito California.

Because it never raced, it never needed any repairs, thus Porsche # 550-090 is so true to the appearance it had the day that it rolled out of the factory that it has been used as a reference for other 550 Spyder restorations. Although the paint finish is spotty and discolored and the aluminum bodywork has a few waves and dings, it is totally original, which is why it fetched nearly $6 million dollars when sold at auction in 2016.

All color photos by the author