Porsche 356A Carrera 1500 Speedster by Reutter Reading time: about 1 minute. Cars

Classic Cars

German

Porsche

The Porsche 356A Carrera 1500 Speedster is a car that was a revelation in its day, the exceedingly punchy and surprisingly reliable four-cam, air-cooled flat-four had powered the 356s sister car, the 550 Spyder, to a slew of race wins and podiums in the mid-1950s and so Porsche decided to fit a version of the same engine to their 356 model range and sell it at a premium.

The 100hp, 1498cc air-cooled opposed DOHC Type 547/1 four-cylinder engine was fitted with dual Solex 40 PII-4 carburettors and fed power to the rear wheel courtesy of a Type 644 four-speed manual transmission, it sat on independent front suspension with torsion bars, trailing arms and tubular shock absorbers at the front and independent swing-axle rear suspension with torsion bars, radius arms, and tubular shock absorbers at the rear.

With a wet-weight of 1900lbs the little car from Stuttgart became a favourite of amateur racing drivers the world over, but nowhere was it more popular than the United States – the market that the original Speedster had first been built for.

Prices on these original Carrera 1500 Speedsters has been skyrocketing in recent years, it used to be possible to pick one up for well under $100,000 but now you’ll need to add 3 zeros to that and possibly more. The relative rarity of the model coupled with the huge popularity of vintage motor racing has meant that cars like this one that can cheerfully dominate period racing events with performance to spare are now highly sought after.

Click here to visit the official lot listing via RM Auctions.

Photo Credits: Tim Scott ©2014 Courtesy of RM Auctions

Author Details Ben Branch Founder + Senior Editor Ben Branch has had his work featured on CNN, Popular Mechanics, the official Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, and many more. Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with millions of readers around the world and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. You can follow Ben on Instagram here, Twitter here, or LinkedIn here.





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