Porsche - Porsche 356
The Porsche 356 was the work of Ferry Porsche, based around the prewar peoples car concept, of which his father Ferdinand Porsche had built a few high speed mid engined examples of. These post war built cars under the charge of Ferry Porsche had a new chassis and body design using VW components and suspension. The engines were based on the VW, but improved with special cylinder heads, camshaft and manifolding using twin carburettors, with the engine now placed overhanging at the rear for extra space inside the car. After the production of these Austrian built cars at their Gmund factory, Ferry Porsche moved his operation to Germany with the coachbuilder Reutter who would be building the bodies. These Porsche 356A were what is now known as the Type 1 and Type 2 cars (using the internal factory designation).
By 1962 the "T5" model 356B was introduced, and for the T6 "notchback" of 1962 there were obvious external changes such as twin grilles on the engine cover and a fuel filler on the wing making it no longer necessary to open the front lid to refuel. Porsche had taken out huge advertising in magazines extolling the virtues of drum brakes and why they were using them in favour of disc brakes, due to pressures, which was no doubt because they had committed to large orders of brake components under contract. But as soon as these drum brake stocks were used up disc brakes got fitted, and the identical looking cars became the 356C in 1964. The 356C also had the option of the SC model, with pushrod 95hp engine, and the 2 litre Carrera 2 cars with the 4 cam enlarged 550 type engines.
Note how similar the tread pattern of the Blockley tyre is to what was actually fitted in period by the factory. We guarantee there is no better 165VR15 tyre in the world, these being the first V rated tyre made in recent times, and the low price is only because we sell direct. If you try them and disagree we will refund! Scrub them in as you should any tyre for say 30-40 miles (as motorcyclists know you should do) and just see how good they are!
Tyre size for all the Porsche 356 is the Blockley 165VR15 and most cars would use inner tubes also, as the wheels are not tubeless type. See full details of this 165VR15 tyre below. The earliest cars had 16" wheels with tyre size 5.00x16 but period lists we have show the preA 356 cars and earlier 356A type T1and T2 listed with the smaller 155R15 tyre size by the Society of Motor Manufacturers listing this size up to 1957 - so we also show below details of this smaller 155HR15 tyre which was original fitment radial size for the earlier Porsche 356.
