In the afterglow of last year's 50th anniversary celebrations for the Porsche 911, it's been forgotten that some people were a bit disappointed when the car was first shown as the Type 901 at the Frankfurt show in September 1963. Everybody was excited about the new dry-sump flat 6 engine, but a few people (like me) wanted something a bit sleeker and maybe a little less civilized, like the short-lived 356 Abarth Carrera from 1960.
Then dealers were annoyed at the delay in getting the car into production; it was another year before the "production" version (still called the 901) was shown again at Frankfurt, but Porsche was only able to produce 82 of the cars from mid-September to mid-November 1964. And when Porsche exhibited the 901 at the Paris Show in October 1964, Peugeot objected that it held the rights to 3-digit numbers with a single zero in the middle...they'd obviously missed complaining about all Bristols from 401 through that year's 408, BMWs from a few years earlier like the 503 and 507, and also the Pegaso Z102 and 103. Nonetheless, in order to avoid renaming (or renumbering) the car just for the French market, Porsche took the simple expedient of changing the middle zero to a one. Those first 82 cars stayed 901s, though, and the 904 sports racer stayed the 904, but got a name (Carrera GTS) as well. The later 906 road racer would be named Carrera 6. As 1965 got under way, Porsche brass was likely heaving a sigh of relief, with their new baby finally rolling off the production line and their order books filled…
Then dealers noticed that there was no convertible version listed for the new 911 and its 4 cylinder kid brother, the 912. This particularly irritated Johnny Von Neumann, Porsche and VW distributor for Southern California. After all, Von Neumann's Los Angeles distributorship not only sold 20,000 VWs a year (he'd reluctantly taken on the marque to get Porsche), but more Porsche convertibles than were sold in all of Germany. So, after obtaining a bare 911 chassis from the factory in Stuttgart, he had it shipped to Bertone with a request for a production-ready convertible. Giorgetto Giugiaro was in his last year at Bertone, but he left traces of his thinking all over this car...
…which was originally metallic red with the Campagnolo alloy wheels shown above, but was eventually restored in black with Porsche 914 "gas burner" wheels as shown below.
This car was for sale at a classic car shop in Monterey in the early 90s, and my recollection is that in the metal it gave the impression of a big-scale Fiat 850 spider. Like some of the revisionist 914 designs in our post on "Porsche 914 Alternative Visions" (3-13-16) this car conveys Italian brio more effectively than Porsche parentage, despite clues like the tall rear deck (to clear the cooling fan), air intakes deftly inset behind the doors, the short wheelbase, and ample rear overhang. When it turned out that the car couldn't be produced profitably even at an $8k target (about $1,500 more than a 911 coupe) the project was cancelled, and so the Bertone 911 remained a one-off. Fortunately, Porsche management had the Targa up its sleeve, and this eventually placated Von Neumann and other US dealers. Once the 911 became established, and performance versions like the "S" and "RS" became available, dealers found other things to complain about. The lack of real space for rear-seat passengers, for example. So in the late 60s, Pininfarina was called in to try converting the 911 into a true four passenger. PF's 1969 B-17 prototype proved, like Jaguar's efforts a few years earlier on the E-type 2 + 2, that even a master can have a hard time with proportions when stretching a 2 passenger cabin to seat 4…
It occurred to me that Porsche might have saved the effort, and the money, by fishing around in their garage full of old prototypes to find their T7 (also known as Type 754) from 1959. Shown below is Butzi Porsche's first pass at a design for what became the 911, and it happened to be a 4 passenger package. While it failed to meet the approval of senior management (i.e., his dad) it did contain some useful ideas for the car that would define Porsche for at least 4 decades. And it told anyone willing to look that the new car really wanted to accommodate no more than 2 lucky souls…
Photo credits:
All photos are from Wikimedia except Von Neumann / Bertone 911 cabrio, which is from
carbuildindex.com.
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