The tale of a catalog picture - part 2

[GeorgeK]

4 years ago (how time flies), I set out to recreate a factory brochure picture from 1977/78, shot by the factory for the '78 SC catalog, and the story can be read there:

The tale of a catalog picture

I also had this image stored on my hard drive, which I kept for the time when I get to buy my own 356:



As we know, Porsche prices took an upward hike, and finding a good (heck, any) 356 in Europe is a 90K+ plan, which I can not swing.

So I figured, why not try with what I have? Since the last project, the cabrio got a factory hard top, which is 1- a very interesting option and 2- good news for today with cold and rainy forecast.

I was pretty sure that picture, shot in 1963 or '64 was shot in the same area as the later one would be made 14 years later, and I spent quite a while on Google maps and in my own road trip pics trying to make sense of it. I could not find the correct combination of turns, river and covered road. That is, until I dug out *old* road maps of the area, that showed that the road was less covered 50 years ago. I had it.

Now that I knew the place, road trip!

By now the (massive) snow layer has quite molten, with still too much in the passes, so we took the rail ferry under the Furka pass.





After getting off the train, it was a short drive to the photo spot, in the so called Schöllenen Schlucht, just below Andermatt. I had my wife drop me in the correct spot and she drove off, to drive the road a few times, making sure she was not followed/following too close.



As luck has it, the whole segment is in the midst of a complete rebuild, following avalanches (snow and rock) that blocked the town for weeks in the last few winters. This means that more of the road is getting covered, and that the segment where the red 356 was on the original picture is now covered...
I was lucky enough that the railing had not been put up yet, reducing the difficulty of getting the right angle, But finding the exact spot where the photographer stood 45 years ago is now imposible.

With these parameters, it was a matter of aligning the still visible structures and shooting (a lot, digital is cheap) of pictures.

Raw results, the best shots of the series:







For reference:

[GeorgeK]

My wife then picked me up and we proceeded to drive the only open pass at this time, then rode home. As luck has it, it started pouring rain 10 minutes after I was finished. Whew.







Once home, it was a matter of cropping the images to approximate the original framing as closely as possible. Sadly this is no longer possible, so I will be satisfied with these results:

[proporsche]

Nice work ,very cool you took your time for this......when i drove my 911 1st time after shipping it to Europa( back in 2009)..i got lost in those mountain and i did not care it was just fine being lost on these nice roads;-)
people up there did not even spoke German or Italian..it was a very nice mix of both languages i have never heard of...overall super experience....

Ivan

[rwest]

What a cool adventure. Great picture.

[Sebscst]

Really cool story!