Most here know the story of Paul, (Seahawk), buying the 356 that once belonged to the father of Scott, (YTKNUCKLER). For anyone who missed it, here is the original thread:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-discussions/513436-my-dads-356-found.html
I picked up the car for him here in CA. I'm doing some maintenance on it as time allows, in order to get it ready to drive x-country to Paul's place in Maryland. We are not sure yet which of us will drive it home but it will get there soon. Possibly a combination of the both of us. It's a great car and my first real experience with a 356, the original Porsche.
I've naturally gone completely OCD on the subject of these cars and have been quickly acquiring books and literature on them as well as lurking on the 356 registry board. I picked up a cool compendium of old road tests from Car and Driver and Sports Car Illustrated, ( a defunct magazine). It's fascinating to me to see what the auto press had to say at the time on these cars. One test of the *brand-new-at-the-time* 356A in about 1955 mentions that many Porsche people do not like the changes. Back then, most all of the owners were fanatic enthusiasts and their opinions were always noted in any articles. Yes folks, the PWDs of the time were complaining that Porsche had ruined the character of the car with the introduction of the 356A! It's hilarious. With every evolutionary, super-incremental model change, the purists screamed even though the changes were always engineering improvements by any even remotely objective standards.
Anywhoo..., as a lover of all air-cooled cars, (Porsche/VW/Corvair/Borgward/etc.), I'm completely tits over heels in love with this thing. It's unmistakably a Porsche and anyone who has owned an air-cooled 911 will immediately recognize the DNA. It also contains a lot of its original VW ancestry but by the time of this 356B T6, they had been essentially 100% Porsche for 10 years. IOW, no shared VW parts except for certain handles and knobs, etc. It's fun to drive and very economical-great MPG and extremely minimal maintenance if they are restored to new-ish mechanical condition. As for quality of construction and materials, let's just say that barring rust and accidents, these are easily 100 year cars. This particular one is 48 years young and just nicely broken-in for the most part.
I'm going to chronicle the work I'm doing on it in this thread, partly because of the inter-Pelican nature of the project and also because it's easier to post here than write long, picture-filled emails to Paul every other day.
Hopefully some will get vicarious pleasure from it, I'm getting real-world pleasure galore.
