The real #1 911

The real #1 911 VINTAGE PORSCHE
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The real first and the fake 'FIRST'

Click here for the report on Seinfeld's doubtful 'FIRST'

The controversy doesn't end at 'FIRST'. 'LAST' is the last produced
911 for the North American market and not the last of all. The real
last 911 was produced in the spring of 1998, when Ferry Porsche died.

Porsche clearly went over the top to please Jerry Seinfeld.

But...
no doubts about the authenticity of # 13327,
the very first of all existing Porsche 911's,
restored with love and patience, instead of
a lot of hurry, extremely deep pockets and
hermetically closed Porsche factory doors.
The following article was originally published
in Excellence, November 1994 by Don Hollway

It resides, for now, in a voluminous garage attached to a seemingly innocuous suburban safe house, the location of which is, and must remain, a secret. Go inside, past the ’64 356B Carrera II, the ’65 356SC Cabrio, and the ’59 356A convertible, for these are mundane, workaday cars compared to the piece hidden under its dust cover like a work of art about to be unveiled—a vision in Signal Red, the sculpted lines still as fresh as the day Butzi Porsche first put pen to paper. A Porsche 911, you think, and certainly an early model. But you don’t know the half of it.

This car is the sole surviving Porsche 901 test prototype known on earth.

Check the front corner air intakes, the chrome 356-like wheel covers, the wipers parking on the right, and the one-piece PORSCHE nameplate on the engine cover, and you may think yourself lucky enough to have come across one of the fabled 235, 300000-series Porsche 911s produced in late 1964. But look again. There’s no trim strip below the doors. The fuel filler lid is circular, not oval. The ignition/steering lock is on the steering column. The front deck lid rises on torsion bar struts, and the engine lid on coil springs, not gas struts. The hand-cranked sunroof—vent roof, really—retracts only part way, and forward at that. Instead of the familiar five VDO gauges the instrument panel bears just two, very large ones, with hand painted markings. And, most importantly, the serial plate bears just five digits—13327. Now it’s starting to dawn on you.

Only four such cars are known to have ever existed. In the summer of 1963, when Porsche AG was in the final stages of bringing to production a replacement for its legendary but long in the tooth Type 356, they targeted September’s Frankfurt Auto Show for the new type’s debut. As Porsche’s “home” show this had definite appeal, but the fact that it was held biannually meant that missing the target date meant either putting off production two years or unveiling the new design at a foreign show, both unacceptable alternatives.

The new car’s basic design—designated Type 901, a little longer than the 356, a little narrower, and a lot more powerful—had existed since 1959, but numerous design details had yet to be worked out. To facilitate hands on development, Porsche allotted ten serial numbers (some sources indicate 13) for test prototype cars.

It seems six of these five-digit numbers—13321 through 13325, and 13329—were either never applied to actual cars, or were applied to dead end design forays which never reached culmination. Four cars, however, were numbered: 13326, 13327, 13328 and 13330. The first of these, disguised with false fins and radiator, louvered quarter windows and divided rear window, was photographed making the rounds of the Nürburgring by the German automotive press during the summer prior to the Frankfurt show. Porsche records indicate this car, with colors variously indicated as blue or green, was owned by Ferdinand Piëch, the designer of its soon to be famous six cylinder boxer, and was utilized for development of that engine. It is almost certainly this same 901, painted yellow, which debuted on schedule that September. (Two years later Piëch sold 13326; in 1967, having been sold again, it vanished into history)

By November, however, Porsche had completed a second prototype, 13327. Painted signal red, it is possibly the car exhibited at the 1964 Geneva show and was used in testing until late June 1965. By that time the 901 model (redesignated 911 to avoid legal entanglements with Peugeot, which held the French copyright on all three digit designations with zeroes in the middle) had entered production and in fact the two remaining 901 prototypes, 13328 and 13330, may have been refitted, renumbered and sold as such. But in a gesture typical of the factory’s relationship with its favored drivers, 13327 was sold to renowned Porsche racer, PR man and Christophorus editor Richard von Frankenberg. In 1973, however, von Frankenburg (who since joining Porsche in 1950 had survived any number of automotive mishaps, including a famous flying somersault in a Porsche 550A on the banking at Berlin’s Avus circuit in 1956) was killed in an unrelated car accident. Not long afterward 13327 went to Italy, and followed its brethren into obscurity.

Eleven years passed

In December 1984 Pennsylvania auto dealer, Porsche racer and local PCA chapter president Don Meluzio was on the lookout for a truly one of a kind Porsche. A spot in Porsche Panorama advertising the “Ultimate Restoration” caught his eye. It seemed a 911 model of unknown history and deplorable condition had been abandoned in a New York garage.

What Meluzio saw there certainly justified the advertising hyperbole: the car was little more than a shell. The sunroof was included, but separate and bent, as if somebody had run over it with one of Professor Porsche’s World War II era Tiger tanks. A real, though minor, collision had marred the left front end. Somebody had given the car a crude, spray can paint job, in orange, even over the rubber trim. Glass was missing, leather was corrupted, rust had set in. And, worst of all, there was no engine. The owner claimed the car was an original 901 prototype, but could offer no proof. “For every person who said, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s a prototype,’” says Meluzio, “‘I had one more person—who should really know what they were talking about—saying, “It’s bogus”.

But it was plain to Meluzio, as an auto dealer, that the sunroof installation—complete with drain channels—was a factory job and not the handiwork of some aftermarket hack. Fellow PCA member Denny Frick, a Porsche restoration artist of the first magnitude, assured him the car could still be brought back to its former glory. Secure in his conviction the car was genuine, Meluzio made the buy.

But just in case he was wrong, he determined to ascertain the car’s history by going straight to the source. In 1985, before leaving for vacation in Germany and Austria, he wrote ahead requesting an audience with Butzi Porsche. Unfortunately he arrived at Porsche Design just a few days after Butzi’s mother passed away, and instead an assortment of Porsche engineers looked over Meluzio’s photos of the car.

“I didn’t understand their German and they didn’t understand my English,” recalls Meluzio. “I showed them the torsion bar hood hinges in front and they’re sitting there shaking their heads no. I showed them the sunroof that retracts forward and they’re going, “Nein, nein.’”

The Germans thought the car was the work of a California hot rodder, not a Porsche design. But they agreed to contact an old hand at the Porsche dealership in Zell am See who’d worked in the Porsche body shop in 1963.

“So they called this guy and told him they had this American nut telling them he’s got this Porsche car with a sunroof that goes the wrong way, and they’re shaking their heads no,” laughs Meluzio. “Then, all of a sudden, it’s ‘Ja? Ja. Ja!’” The Porsche people told him, “You’re right. We made that car.”

Vindicated, Meluzio returned home the owner of a truly one of a kind Porsche. But he was too busy with his racing to immediately undertake the 901’s restoration. Not until 1986 did he and Frick begin dismantling the car; not until 1988, when it belatedly occurred to them that the 911’s 30th anniversary was on the horizon, did they begin work in earnest.

And so the 901 had come full circle. Instead of a contingent of German engineers hurrying to cobble a car together in time for the ’63 Frankfurt Auto Show, it was Denny Frick and his team at German Classic Cars trying to restore 13327 in time for the ’93 New York Auto Show.

The key was research. Using vintage photos of 13326 taken during testing and at the Frankfurt show, and records which Frick acquired from the Porsche archives (in the course of which he became somewhat of a fixture around Stuttgart), they were able to learn most of the 901’s original design details. Still, the task ahead seemed impossible.

Most serious was the lack of an engine, which as Porsche restorers well know can strike a hard blow against a restored Porsche’s value. But the records indicated several engines may have been installed and changed by Porsche during this car’s career as a test bed. In this sense 13327 had no “original” engine; Meluzio and Frick managed to obtain an early production, low serial 901 engine—a rarity in itself, with Solex carburetors and dual fuel pumps driven off the left cam—and the infamous heat exchangers which caused Porsche so much grief in later years. The 901’s exhausts run through cutouts in the original one piece, wraparound, metal rear panel. (In Butzi’s first design they ran underneath, so low and far to the rear that they often dragged, but this was revised in time for the Frankfurt show.)

“The good news was that the car’s pan was intact, so the repair work we had to do was inner construction—patches and pieces,” says Frick. “We didn’t lose the personality of the car; we didn’t have to fabricate giant pieces.”

The bad news was that, with a prototype, they had no other example on which to base their efforts or obtain parts. “None of the body panels, none of the glass fits a 911,” notes Meluzio, “If you pull a 1964 911 up to this car and try to exchange doors, it won’t fit. This car is all hand built, it’s all one off.”

The 901 is nearly two inches shorter and more than a half inch slimmer than a ’64 911. “You can take some trim pieces and interchange them,” says Frick, “but the fenders won’t interchange and the front and rear lids can’t interchange, because of the torsion bars and coil springs.”

However, to save time and production costs, Porsche engineers made use of their existing parts stock in the construction of prototypes. A look inside the 901 reveals a large diameter steering wheel straight off a 356C, as are the driver’s side mirror, window winder handles and grab handle on the right side A pillar. The glove box lid and radio mount are more descendant of the 356 than ancestral to the 911. The column mounted ignition switch appears to have come from an early ’60s Volkswagen bus and the door latches from a Karmann Ghia. The unique, twin dial instrument panel (another idea that, for obvious reasons, didn’t pan out; even the Frankfurt car had the familiar five dial panel) uses lights to warn of low generator power, oil pressure, and even fuel level. The dash uses only three knobs, for the headlights, foglights and the fresh air vent. The door jamb fuel filler release is one idea that did pan out, though not right away; it’s a round knob as in later 911s, not the pull ring of early models. The fixed rear quarter windows similarly found a home in later, but not early, 911s. The turn signal and wiper levers are atypical, but the shifter, heater and emergency brake lever designs went into production. Because of the 901’s smaller dimensions the left front fender takes up more footwell space, forcing the pedal assembly over to the right. (The brake pedal features an elaborately machined, cammed design which increases brake assistance as the pedal is depressed—mechanical power braking!)

Whereas production 911s are asymmetrical under the hood, the 901, like the Frankfurt show car, is symmetrical. The fuel tank is welded from over 20 pieces of hand formed steel. The battery is high mounted, with a separate cover mat. The exposed washer reservoir is heat shielded, indicating that at one time there may have been a gas heater located next to it.

In fact, 13327 is riddled with air passages and heating ducts and it seems the car may have been used to test heating and ventilation configurations—hence the odd ventroof, rear quarter windows, and internally pivoting (rather than hinged) vent windows, which are defrosted via an air tube running through the door and welded to the sill. Possibly 13326 exhibited some airflow deficiencies which the engineers attempted to rectify on the second try. Every time the builders abandoned one configuration in favor of another, they simply sealed the old ducts with aluminum plates and cut new ones.

Staying true to the car’s character, Frick preserved these quirks in its restoration. The white fiberglass glove box, despite having a corner cut off to make room for an air passage left out of the final design, still bears the word Meister—master—indicating it was the design upon which all 911 glove boxes were to be based. The handmade seat rails and window trim strips still bear original file marks, and the backs of the twin instrument pods are stamped with the dates 9/63 and 10/63. For true Porsche devotees to feel these pieces is akin to running a hand over stone carvings last touched by the original Egyptian or Mayan artisans.

For the official Porsche 911 30th Anniversary poster, the still unfinished car was trucked to Dover, Delaware for a photo shoot on a bitterly cold winter day. Its mufflers were still unattached, so for rear view shots Frick simply hung the tail pipes on it separately. At the peak of restoration he had ten people working on the car at once, and 13327 was restored in time for the 1993 New York Auto Show, where it was exhibited on the Porsche display stand beside a black 1994 Carrera 4. If Meluzio and Frick expected star status, they were mistaken—Meluzio remembers, “There’s a guy huckstering programs with a picture of the car and Denny says to him, ‘See that car? That car belongs to this guy here,’ and the guy goes, ‘Yeah? Well, you’re still paying to get in, and you’re not getting a free program either.”

But 13327 went on to even greater glory. After New York it won the divisional honors in the Zone 1 concours, and then the Honorary Judges Choice at the 1993 Porsche Parade. After that, and before 13327 goes into retirement in a garage he’s having specially built for it, Meluzio intends to enter it in the 1994 Porsche Parade at Lake Placid in hopes of a Manhattan Trophy, and let the competition beware. “In my estimation,” he says, “it’s got to be the ultimate 911. Nobody’s gonna top it.”

Few true Porsche enthusiasts could disagree.

Click here to visit the illustrated register of '64 911's