Vintage Porsche factory footage

The Porsche is one of the most majestic vehicles on the road. Known for it's superb handling and race inspired design, the following vintage footage of the Porsche 356 assembly gives us an inside peak on just how the Porsche notoriety came to be. The Porsche 356 was the first "production" vehicle. Production started in 1948 at the Gmund, Austria facility where fifty vehicles were assembled and produced. Then in 1950, they moved the production to Zuffenhausen, Germany where general production of the 356 continued until the replacement model showed up in April of 1965. Out of the total 76,000 Porsche 356's produced, it's estimated that only half of them are still on the road today.

The Porsche 356 was designed by Ferdinand Porsche, and strongly resembles his other design, the Volkswagen Beetle. It was no powerhouse that's for sure, as it was simply a four cylinder air-cooled engine that was rear-mounted in the chassis. Built for more handling than outright performance, this is where it all began. From this point up until the late 1980's, Porsche wasn't ever known for gut-wrenching power; but simply for it's clever design and seat-pinning handling.

Watching this vintage footage brings us back to the days when assembly was much different. Since then, incorporation of computer controlled machinery such as CNC and CAD has helped to streamline the process and make the vehicles much more cost efficient to produce. Safety, performance, handling, and more have all been improved thanks to the use of modern computing technology. Even though they didn't have all the fancy technology we possess today, Porsche still did an amazing job producing quality vehicles at outstanding production rates. Enjoy the flashback clip, it's time to jump in the YouTube time machine and see what vehicle production was like back in the day.



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Source: Tampa Sports Car Examiner

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