Magazine Feature: Anatomy Of An Icon
The Porsche 911 is to cars what the Rolex Daytona is to watches – a perfectly composed, sternly planted, and rigorously over designed product that has come to define an entire category. And to that end, each can end up appearing desperately uninteresting, as friends, colleagues, and journalists further its ubiquity. Hell, there’s a case to be made that the 911, just like the Daytona, is even boring. You know, boring in that same way as Tom Brady or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – we get it, you speak French and wear fun socks.
In May 2017, the one millionth Porsche 911 rolled off the production line in Stuttgart, Germany. If you own a Porsche 911, arguably the archetype of the performance sports car, there are at least 999,999 other examples on the road. But it wasn’t always this way. In 1965, the 911 was downright revelatory. Almost nobody saw it coming.
The Reaction
Imagine you’re a staff reporter for Car and Driver in the spring of 1965. The average vehicle in the United States at the time weighs approximately double what it does today, and the average 0-60 mph time approaches 20 seconds. Drum brakes are the norm, as are three-speed transmissions. Porsche, the company known for those great little super-beetles, has just released a new model called the 911 after 14 solid months of teasing a car called the 901 that it claims will “change everything.” Peugeot protested Porsche’s use of “901” because it already utilized a three-digit naming convention with “0” in the middle. Porsche simply changed the “0” to a “1” and the 911 was born. The Stuttgart-based sports car company has struggled to reach markets outside of Europe, with the exception of some small enthusiast communities in California and New York. By this time, the Porsche family has wagered its very existence on the 911 after eight years of ground-up development. It borders on bankruptcy, and this is its big bet.
You see the new front end of the sports car, and a familiar fast-back styling, though a little sharper than before. You know it’s a Porsche, but it looks wholly different. It feels different too. Higher quality, maybe?
“No contest. This is the Porsche to end all Porsches – or, rather, to start a whole new generation of Porsches,” begins that now-famous Car and Driver review, the very first review of the 911 in English. “Only yesterday the 356 seemed ahead of its time. Today, you realize its time has passed… The 911 is a superior car in every respect… the stuff legends are made of.” The review continues along these lines for the next thousand words, as the author makes mention of the countless ways the 911 has created not just a new product, but also an entirely new experience.
The 911 came with a revolutionary six-cylinder engine, a more capable and stable solution than the four cylinder engines for which Porsche was known. More than that though, it changed what many thought was possible in a sports car with its performance matched by a thoroughness and attention to detail not found in any automobile up until that point. The Car and Driver author makes note of how the 911 has two heaters and two defrosters, three speed windshield wipers, map and courtesy lights, four-nozzle windshield washers, and even padded sun visors with a vanity mirror! It doesn’t stop there – the 911’s ergonomic design is brilliant. The steering wheel is a “special joy,” and the author goes on to remark on how it is possible for the first time that a driver may operate the turn signals, ignite and dim the headlights, and operate the wipers and washers all without moving his hands from the wheel. The dashboard is “a magnificent edifice,” and he notes with shock that the gauges include not just oil pressure but also oil levels – meaning no dipstick required. Even to a man who reviewed cars for a living, all this was special.
All this praise comes before he even refers to how the 911 drives. He equates the car to a “pocket battleship: what it can’t out-accelerate it can out-handle, and what it can’t out-handle, it can out-accelerate.”
He continues that in showroom condition, there aren’t five cars in the world that could run a road course faster than a 911, and those that could would likely fall by the wayside long before the Porsche expired.
This review was published in the first half of 1965, long before buyers at large could fully understand what this new car with a five-speed transmission and four-wheel disc brakes would mean to the consumer. Though the 911 was priced at $6,490 when new – considerably more than the 356 it replaced – it was still more than $1,500 less than the Mercedes-Benz 230SL and less than half the price of a comparable Ferrari – the 330 GT was $14,000 in 1965. The 1965 911 allowed more people than ever before to have a true performance-oriented car as a daily driver. While creatives and Madison Avenue executives were debating between this new German-made car and a new product line from Ford called the Mustang, the 911 was quickly proving its mettle as an actual race car, winning three Monte Carlo rallies and a European Rally Championship in its first five years before jumping onto the track to compete at LeMans and Daytona – always in a form available for purchase at your local dealership.
“It’s kind of a pocket battleship: what it can’t out-accelerate it can out-handle, and what it can’t out-handle, it can out-accelerate.”
Car and Driver, April 1965
But, for a certain type of connoisseur, it’s those earliest 911s that are the most special. There are significant but subtle differences that set these cars apart from later models, and they make all the difference. After all, these were the cars that started a revolution.
The Details
The first step to identifying a first-year Porsche 911 is to understand that all 911s only look the same to the uninitiated – a state of living to which I simply don’t subscribe.
Is it a short wheelbase or a long wheelbase car? This is where one should begin his or her examination of an early 911. From 1965 through 1968, the wheelbase of the 911 was 87.06 inches long. The result was an off-balance weight distribution that, according to some, caused the 911 to spin when taking turns at speed. In 1969, the rear wheels of the 911 were moved back 2.24 inches, providing slightly better balance. Study a few early 911s and you’ll be able to tell the difference between long and short-hooded cars quickly – to some, the Porsche 911 died the day the wheels moved back.
After one has identified a 911 as an early car by the short wheelbase, look at the rear decklid to see if “911” is horizontal or vertical – if the latter, you have a 1965 or ’66 car. Next, look inside. If you see a dashboard made of teak, a light-stained wood, with a matching steering wheel, you know the car is from either 1965 or ’66 – no later. There is a chance that a wooden wheel may have been special ordered in a slightly later car, but wooden dashes only existed for the first two years. Like with many questionable decisions in collectibles, it was not well received at the time – but now, wooden dash cars are the holy grails of ’60s Porsche collecting.
Along with the wooden dash, you can also expect to see green-dialed dash gauges and a leather shift boot that are only found in ’65 and ’66 model year cars. On the technical side, the 1965 and ’66 911s were the only two years to feature Solex carburetors, and it was common practice to have these swapped for the free-flowing Weber carbs during a service, as they were the de facto choice for all Porsches from 1967 into the fuel-injected years.
The Definition
Up until now, all of these tells have provided a solid structure for dating an early 911. But the difference in collectibility from a 1965 to a 1966 is considerable – though they are mechanically identical. A ’65 represents the first of its kind – a giant leap forward in automotive design and technology – a ’66 is that, but one year later. And it is here that the main point of contention between early 911 specialists begins – just how much more desirable is a ’65 versus a ’66, and how are they defined?
The answer is not simple. There are distinctly different definitions of “model year” and “production year” – and there are regional interpretations of both that vary widely. For example, some would say that any car built in the year 1965 constitutes a production year 1965 and thus it should benefit from the premium associated with owning a first-year Porsche 911. But that is a loose definition, one that tends to be favored by European dealers looking to charge a hefty premium for the connection to a first-year car. A far stricter and, in my belief, precise definition of what constitutes a first-year 911 is one that is considered a “model year” 1965 car. This generally requires the car to have been built before the August summer holiday in 1965. Why? Because production of model 1965 cars actually began in the fall of 1964 – and that is how production cycles exist, even today. However, the tendency of owners to see anything on their car dated to 1965 and then project that car as a model year ’65 vehicle is a real one – and, at any given time, the vast majority of cars advertised as ’65s in the world are in fact model year ’66 cars. If looking to buy a true 1965 car, there are a few ways you can be sure you are buying an indisputably authentic first-year car. The first is a build date in the first half of 1965 – generally thought to be any time before July 31 of that year. The second is the chassis number – which should be no later than roughly 301900. This assumes there were roughly 1,900 Porsche 911s made in 1965. Finally, and this is perhaps the easiest way to clearly define a car as a ’65 or a ’66, one may simply glance in the door jamb of the car to read both the chassis number and the paint code. Porsche paint codes are simple – the manufacturer creates colors in two year blocks – so if a code reads “64xx,” the car was using a 1964 and ’65 paint code. If the code reads “66xx,” then the car is using a model year 1966 paint code and the car is clearly a ’66 model year. There is no way around this, though you will encounter dealers by the boot-load that will attempt to ignore this black-and-white identifier.
What’s more, there are two physical tells that 1965 cars should have if they have been kept to original factory specifications over the last half century. The first is that the knee-pad on the dashboard of a 1965 car is flat – on a 1966 it is rounded. Want more? The bezel of the ignition on a 1965 Porsche 911 is quite small – roughly 1.5 inches in diameter. The bezel to the ignition on a 1966 is roughly double that – though again, you might find a 1965 car with a later bezel on it – it’s up to you how you view that car. To me, a 1965 car must retain all of the aforementioned qualities. Admittedly, the odds of finding a sports car that is over 50 years old and retains all of these original parts is next to impossible, but that’s what collecting is all about, isn’t it?
That’s just it – the very first year of the Porsche 911 represents so much to so many people, and yet more of them are destroyed by collectors each year – over-restored with new parts to completely change the aura of the car so that they’re bright and shiny enough to attract a millionaire’s attention at a Pebble Beach auction. For some cars – even some 911s – that’s okay. But not for a first-year 911 – this one year’s worth of sports cars need to be held to a different standard, and revered in a whole new manner, and to be appreciated for all that they are – arguably the most important model year of the most important car of the postwar era. To further that Car and Driver review from April 1965, this is the car that ushered in not just a new era of Porsches, but also a new era of product design as a whole.
This story was originally published in Volume 1 of Hodinkee Magazine in September of 2017. This is the first time this story has been shared as a digital feature.
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