Oldest surviving Porsche prototype to be auctioned off [View all]

[True Dough]

Take a gander at this baby:

Possibly the most significant Porsche sports car ever built, a 1939 race car known as the Type 64, built for the Berlin-Rome race, is set to go up for auction this August.

Before the Second World War, while Ferdinand Porsche was tasked by the Nazis with building an economical “people’s car,” his son, “Ferry” Porsche, took it upon himself to design a race car Germany could use in competition.

What he came up with was the Type 64, an aluminum-bodied sports car utilizing aircraft engineering and aerodynamics, but based on the KdF-Wagen, the prototype car that would become the Beetle.

Powering the Type 64 was the same flat-four found in the KdF-Wagen, but with compression bumped up so it could make 32 horsepower; and with the rear axle ratios changed to allow for a top speed of 173.5 km/h.

https://driving.ca/porsche/auto-news/news/oldest-surviving-porsche-prototype-from-1939-set-to-be-auctioned-off