Beschreibung:

1,587cc DOHC Flat 4-Cylinder Engine Dual Weber 46 IDM1 Carburetors 150+bhp at 7,200rpm 5-Speed Manual Transaxle 4-Wheel Independent Suspension 4-Wheel Hydraulic Drum Brakes *Multiple first place finisher in the hands of Bob Holbert in 1959 and 1960 race season *Three owners from new *In the current ownership since 1974 *Eligible for the most exclusive driving and concours events globally Previewing in Bedford Hills, New York by appointment. Please contact motors.us@bonhams.com for scheduling. THE PORSCHE SPYDER Porsche's Typ 718 RSK Spyder was the culmination of years of competition spyders by Porsche. Each step along the way was more successful than the one before as Porsche refined its approach to small displacement performance. The origins of the RSK trace back to the period just before the outbreak of hostilities in the late Thirties. The German government had fostered development of the "people's car" conceived as the KdF-Wagen (Kraft durch Freude, Strength through Joy), the Volkswagen. With its two-door sedan body and small 985cc, 24 brake horsepower engine competition was the antithesis of the Volkswagen's design but its potential was shown when in 1939 Porsche was asked to build a special streamlined coupe on the VW platform. The Typ 60K10 was intended to compete in a proposed race from Berlin to Rome, symbolically linking the capitals of the Axis. The September 1939 date for the event was rendered redundant by the German invasion of Poland on September 1. Even during the war the Porsche design bureau pursued competition projects in moments that could be slipped in between war contracts. The staff and prototype workshop were moved to rural Austria, away from Allied bombers. After hostilities ceased and postwar administration of Germany and Austria were settled a fortuitous contract was obtained to design a Grand Prix car for Piero Dusio's Cisitalia. In the Cisitalia can be seen the precursor of Porsche's later sports racing spyders: mid-mounted horizontally opposed engine and parallel trailing arm front suspension although with a supercharger, deDion rear axle and provision for 4-wheel drive. While these were noteworthy in the postwar racing car design encyclopedia, they reflected much of what Porsche had done prewar including the fabulous Auto Union Silver Arrows and a wartime project for a potentially game-changing sports car. This was the Typ 114 with a mid-mounted 1,493cc dual overhead camshaft 72-degree V10 with shaft drive to the overhead cams and 4-wheel torsion bar sprung independent suspension with parallel trailing arms at the front and swing axles at the rear. A Typ 114 prototype was never built but the concept lingered in the Porsche design bureau's library of promising technical ideas. It was succeeded by the 1948 Typ 356, numbered according to the succession of Porsche design projects – which had been only 60 barely a decade earlier when it was the design number for the KdF-Wagen – which brought the Porsche sports car into reality. VW-based, it took some inspiration from Piero Dusio's success with his production racing cars, the D46, and sports cars, the brilliantly styled 202, based on production FIAT components. However the original Typ 356 design was not rear-engined. Rather, it used the VW drivetrain and rear suspension with the engine located behind the driver and in front of the rear axle. Clearly Porsche recognized the value of mid-engine location, as seen in the Auto Union Types C and D, Porsche's still-born Typ 114 and the postwar Cisitalia Grand Prix, and intended to use it in a low production Volkswagen sports car. Built on a tubular space frame, the original Typ 356 transplanted the trailing arm torsion bar front suspension directly from a VW. The entire driveline and swing arm rear suspension were simply turned around, the torsion bar trailing arms of the VW now becoming leading arms anchored to a frame extension. The engine, now 1,131cc, was given a performance boost with higher compression