356 (356 (all series))

A Sawmill in Carinthia Ferdinand Porsche moved his design office from Stuttgart to Gmund in Carinthia in 1944, and it was there - with Ferdinand interned in France and his son Ferry running the firm - that the first car sold as a Porsche was built. Ferry's account is unadorned: he could not find the car he wanted, so he built it himself. The mid-engined 356 'No. 1' roadster received its operating permit on 8 June 1948 and the first coupe was completed that August. What followed was the 356/2, its engine moved behind the rear axle and its bodies hammer-formed from aluminium sheet by outside specialists including Kastenhofer, Keibl and Beutler. Porsche's own history states that 44 coupes and eight cabriolets were built from the winter of 1948/49 until Austrian production ended in 1950. Other counts run higher, and the Gmund figure has never entirely settled.

Zuffenhausen, Reutter and the Steel Car The first German-built 356 was finished on 6 April 1950. Porsche had no factory of its own and rented space in Reutter's Werk II for engine assembly and final build, while Reutter's Werk I supplied finished, painted and trimmed steel bodies. By the end of 1950, 317 cars had been made. The arrangement lasted until 1963, when Porsche bought the Reutter body business outright and took on roughly a thousand employees with it, which is why so many 356s carry a 'by Reutter' badge. Karmann built bodies too, distinguishable in club literature by round drain holes in the longitudinals. The pushrod engine grew from 1,086 cc through 1,300 and 1,500 to the 1,582 cc Type 616 that served until the end.

Hoffman, the Speedster and California The Speedster exists because Max Hoffman, Porsche's New York importer, wanted something cheaper and more obviously sporting for the American market. It arrived in October 1954 with a chopped, removable windscreen, side curtains in place of wind-up windows, thin bucket seats and cabin heating on the options list. Factory records quoted by RM Sotheby's show cars leaving for Hoffman's dealership with 1600 Normal engines, sealed-beam headlamps and USA bumpers. At $2,995 the 356 A 1600 Speedster was cheap enough to race and light enough to be quick, and it became a fixture of southern Californian club racing. It was also cold and draughty, which is why Porsche replaced it in 1959 with the Convertible D and then the Roadster - better cars to use, and neither worth what a Speedster is now.

Four Camshafts Ernst Fuhrmann drew the Type 547 flat-four for Porsche in 1952. Two overhead camshafts per bank were driven by vertical shafts and angular gears rather than by chains, a layout that made the engine effectively impossible to build on a production line. It appeared first in the 550 Spyder and reached the road in late 1955 as the 1,498 cc Type 547/1 in the 356 A Carrera 1500 GS, at 100 hp where the best pushrod engine of the day gave 75. The 1,966 cc Type 587 of the Carrera 2 followed at 130 hp. Fewer than two thousand vertical-shaft engines were built in all, and a recent specialist rebuild ran to over two hundred hours.

Pre-A, A, B, C The 356 was never replaced, only revised. The 356 A of late 1955 brought a curved one-piece windscreen, revised suspension and the 1,582 cc Type 616 engines. The 356 B of 1959 raised the headlamps and bumpers in T5 form, then squared the bonnet and enlarged the glass in T6 form from 1961, and added the 90 hp Super 90. The 356 C of July 1963 fitted Ate disc brakes at all four corners and offered 75 hp C and 95 hp SC engines. Each step made the car easier to live with and, to a certain kind of buyer, slightly less interesting.

The Last One The 911 had been on sale since 1964, and the 912 took the 356's place in Europe in April 1965. A white cabriolet, decked in flowers, went down the Zuffenhausen line on 28 April 1965. SC models continued to sell in the United States to the end of that year, and ten further 356 C cars were built in May 1966 for the Royal Dutch Police. Output had peaked at 14,151 cars in 1964, a number Ferry Porsche's estimate of five hundred sales does not begin to anticipate.

Rust is the defining fault and always has been. Floorpans, rockers, longitudinals, battery box, door bottoms, lower wings, wheelarches, torsion tube areas, the nose structure and the boot floor all rot, and poorly repaired sills or floors show up as door fit and body alignment that will not come right. The pushrod flat-four is simple but unforgiving of neglect: worn valve guides, timing gear wear, low compression, main bearing wear from poor oil pressure and heat damage are the recurring themes, and a rebuild is quoted at $10,000 to $20,000 before anything unusual is found. The four-speed gearbox wears its synchromesh, second gear first, which shows as a baulk before the oil is warm, and rebuilds are expensive because parts are scarce. Drum-braked cars need regular adjustment and fade under sustained use, which is much of why the disc-braked 356 C is the easiest of the family to drive regularly. On Carrera cars the four-cam engine adds complexity and cost beyond most general workshops.

Structure before everything else. The 356 is a unitary steel car with the body welded to the platform, so corrosion in the longitudinals, floorpans, battery box and torsion tube housings is structural rather than cosmetic, and thick undercoating or fresh paint is the easiest place in which to bury a bad repair. Club guidance points to lap-welded joints six inches behind the headlights as the mark of a badly grafted front clip, and holds that door and lid gaps should measure three millimetres. Paperwork does the rest. Porsche issues a Certificate of Authenticity and a production specification document confirming chassis, engine and gearbox numbers, original colour and delivery details; a car without one is a car taking the seller's word for its specification. That matters most on Speedsters and on anything wearing Carrera badges, where the gap between the original and a well-made tribute is large. Dry-climate cars start from a better place than coastal or northern ones, and on four-cam cars it is worth establishing who last rebuilt the engine and when: the population of people who can do it is small.

As of August 2026, classic.com records an average sale price of $168,495 across all 356 variants from 62 cars listed for sale, a deep and liquid market by classic-car standards. The spread is the point: the highest result on the site is $1,650,000 for a 1951 Sauter Roadster in August 2026, the lowest $1,700 for a coupe project in July 2025. Between those poles the benchmarks are orderly: the 356 A stands at $243,110, the 356 B averages $129,651 from 27 listings and the 356 C $117,084 from eleven. Body style separates the money more than year does: as of August 2026 the 356 A Speedster benchmark is $320,078 and the A cabriolet $196,422, against $114,901 for an A coupe. Four-cam cars trade in a tier of their own, with a 356 C Carrera 2 benchmark of $534,116 trending up and a top four-cam result of $857,500 for a 1958 356 A Speedster Carrera GT on 15 August 2026. Auction evidence tracks those figures: RM Sotheby's sold a 356 A 1600 Speedster for $423,000 including premium at Monterey in August 2025 and a 1963 Carrera 2 Cabriolet for EUR 702,500 at Paris in January 2026.