Didn’t Porsche Design the Corvair?

[kach22i]

From Excellence Magazine in 2015.

December 10, 2015
Story by Karl Ludvigsen
Didn’t Porsche Design the Corvair?
https://www.excellence-mag.com/issues/234/articles/didn-t-porsche-design-the-corvair

As the Corvair took shape under its “Holden 25” code name, its engine was ready for road testing before the first prototype cars. Waiting to accept it was none other than the same 1957 Porsche 356 whose engine was used for cooling experiments. At Chevy’s freshly minted Engineering Center at Warren, Michigan, the first Corvair drivetrain was installed in the Porsche. Complete with Chevy’s manual transmission, effectively creating the first flat-six-powered Porsche ever. The Corvair six fitted it surprisingly well. Eager as a kid, Ed Cole hopped in and belted away....................

Ferry Porsche was, of course, interested in the Corvair. Through Huschke von Hanstein, his director of PR and motorsports, he arranged to buy one of the first ones made. It would be invidious to suggest that Chevrolet’s effort influenced Porsche, but it cannot be overlooked that Leonard Jäntschke’s first prototype engine for the future 911, the Type 745 of 1961, had a four-bearing crankshaft just like the Corvair’s. For its final design, though, Porsche adopted seven main bearings instead. It was a decision that secured the long life of Porsche’s flat six.

Ferry Porsche’s Corvair wasn’t the only one running around the streets of Stuttgart. Dan Gurney, one of Porsche’s Formula One drivers in 1961-1962, brought one over to show what the New World could accomplish in car design. Porsche later used some Corvair Lakewoods to test its first flat sixes.

Five years later, do the historians dispute any of this?

I though Porsche was hired to work on the Corvair engine, didn't you?

[Jeff Hail]

I never knew!

Americans sub-contracting to a German company? Probably an outsourcing program born out of operation paperclip.

But I did know Porsche designed cylinders on various Aerrimachi aircraft motors as well as 2 stroke Aermacchi motors used in Harley Davidson Golf Carts in the 1960's. Then later Harley Davidson bike engines when we Americans could not figure out more cooling fins actually have a function of moving heat when its not in the air stream.