The Legacy of the Type 64

The Porsche 64 is considered by many to be the first automobile produced by Porsche as a company. Many of the parts used to make it, however, came from the Type-60 VW Beetle, which is why some purists may be inclined to call it a product of Volkswagen and likewise consider the 356 to be Porsches first. Regardless, the 64 is acknowledged as the “original Porsche”, and the “great-grandfather” of all Porsches to follow.

The body design was made by the Porsche Büro after wind tunnel tests for a planned V10 sports car that never came into existence, the Type 114. The Porsche 64s body may have been constructed from parts of a Beetle, but the shape and style are so unmistakably Porsche that I can’t imagine considering it anything but. The sleek, flat body was designed to be fast, and managed to get up to a top speed of 90 mph with only 50 horsepower. The striking design was unlike anything ever seen before, and it still looks futuristic to this day.

First, there were three cars. All made by hand shaped aluminum and done by the German bodywork company Reutter. Sadly, one of the originals was destroyed early in World War II. The two remaining were used by the Porsche family, as Ferdinand Porsche was an avid lover of the iconic design.  The Porsche family eventually decided to drive just one of the remaining 64’s, and the other was stowed away.

In May of 1945, American troops discovered the one put in storage, cut the roof off and used it for joyriding for a few weeks until the engine gave up. The Porsche was inevitably scrapped. The last remaining Porsche 64, owned by Ferry Porsche, was restored by Battista Farina in 1947. It was later sold to the Austrian motorcycle racer Otto Mathé, and with it he won the Alpine Rally in 1950. The last time he drove it in a race was at the Monterey Historic Automobile Races in Monterey, California, in 1982.

The last remaining piece of the Type 64 resides in The Allure of the Automobile exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.