Go giddy for the adorable, original Porsche

Look at this adorable little thing. Isn’t it just the kind of thing you feel almost compelled to squeeze?

And, while it might look for all the world like a Porsche Speedster kit car (and is it just us, or are they perversely desirable these days?), this one’s the real deal. Well, kind of. 

It’s been built by Porsche, but it’s not the original car that made its (and Porsche’s) maiden voyage out of an Austrian shed and onto the roads in 1948. This is Porsche’s best attempt to recreate how the car, now known as the 356/1, would have looked during its first exploratory miles. 

The original car, says Porsche, “underwent considerable modification over the next several decades”. Talk about not leaving well enough alone. 

But we digress. As the actual first-ever Porsche is now pretty much inviolable, it was time to bring the original... er, original back to life. 

How? Well, a full 3D scan of “No.1”, then “superimposing these virtual results onto the design drawings from 1948.” Needless to say, it wasn’t exactly hand in glove; resolving the plan and the end result took trawling through Porsche’s 70-year-old archive of photos, drawings and journals. From there, it was the comparatively simple matter of carving a life-sized model of the car from a block of foam. Like we said, comparatively. Then, with quite a bit of time, Germanic perspiration, the original wooden bucks and some hammers, Porsche was able to make a replica body shell. 

From there, a bit of forensic examination of No.1 revealed that the original colour was not silver, but was in fact a duck-egg blue of sorts. As you can see, they then painted the replica accordingly, and fitted just about everything in perfect period accuracy.

So, you’ll notice we said most things. And, oh boy, is there a caveat: there’s no engine, no drivetrain and only simple pipe axles. Yeah, makes no sense. We’re just happy that this exists, and has, possibly, kind of, almost, with enough mental gymnastics, legitimised our idea to buy a 356 Speedster replica. Right? Anyone?