The Porsche 356/1 is a Roadster from Porsche, built from 1948, in a decade split by war, when civilian production stopped and restarted. Under the bonnet: 1.1 . Erwin Komenda drew it.
The background
The Porsche 356/1 was the first real car created by Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche. This prototype car was a two-seater open roadster with a mid-mounted, air-cooled flat-4 engine of 1,131 cc displacement that produced 40 horsepower (30 kW). While the body was an original design, most of the mechanicals (including engine and suspension) were derived from the Volkswagen Beetle which Ferry's father, Ferdinand Porsche, had designed.
The aluminum roadster body of the 356/1 was designed by Porsche employee Erwin Komenda in April 1948 at Gmünd and completed only a month later. Smooth and low, the 356/1 set the pattern for later 356s with one fundamental difference; the engine of the production cars was moved behind the rear axle (to reduce costs and make room for two additional seats). The car was registered by the state of Carinthia (Kärnten) with the license plate K45-286 and made its maiden voyage on June 8, 1948. Only one 356/1 was made and it is on display at the Porsche Museum, Stuttgart.
The engineering
Power comes from 1.1 . It weighs 585 kg. The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. The wheelbase is 82.7 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Where it sits
Its family tree is legible: its successor was the Porsche 356/2; assembly was at Gmünd, Austria. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Citroën 2CV, the Chevrolet Bel Air, the Toyota Land Cruiser — show what else the money bought that year. Its Porsche stablemates include the Porsche P1 and the Porsche Type 12.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Porsche 356/1 — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.