The instant my eyes fell on this picture at the Cohort by robadr titled “Porsche 1600 Super” I knew it was a fake. Which is perfectly all right, as Porsche 356s are very easy to fake well given their shared parentage with the VW. And they can make quite satisfying fakes, since their dynamic qualities can largely (although typically not properly or fully) be faked quite well too. I’d take this in a heartbeat, especially since it’s a replica of a 356A Cabriolet D, exactly my preferred body style for an open 356. It was the successor to the Speedster in 1959, with a slightly taller windshield, better top and nice big leather seats, as the main and most obvious changes. Of course I’d make it look authentic, but that’s just me.
Now let’s start listing all the clues to this being a fake.
The one that grabbed me instantly are the white wall tires. No owner of a genuine 356 would have those. Period. The wheels are obvious fakes too; they look like four bolt VW wheels, although they might well be aftermarket wheels. Authentic aftermarket slotted Porsche 356 wheels are readily available, but my guess is that this is sitting on a ’68 or later VW pan, hence the four bolt wheels, and the inability to fit reproduction Porsche 5 bolt wheels.
Then there’s the hubcaps too; this Porsche “nipple” style hubcap first appeared with the 1960 356B; this car is of course a replica of a 1958-1959 356A. Admittedly, even some genuine 356A owners have put on the nipple style hub caps, as they have become iconic. I much prefer the original baby moons.
Once again, no owner of a genuine (read: very expensive) 356 would put those wire mesh covers over the headlights, nor the extra road lights. It might have been done by someone back in the day, but 356 owners these days are extreme purists.
Most blatantly, there’s the gold “Roadster” script on the front fender; that’s the ultimate external tip-off. That’s where the Speedsters had their script, but no Porsche was ever called a Roadster. And the Cabriolet D as well as other 356s (except the Carrera) had any script there.
If none of that was obvious enough, then a quick glimpse into the interior will tell the tale. Nice try, but it’s pretty far off, starting with the whole basic configuration. The Porsche dash has just one flat plane, not two like this one. And that fat steering wheel column is all sorts of wrong.
Here’s the real thing. The radio, which was rare in these for obvious reasons, would have hung below the dash.
The exhaust is all wrong, as the original had twin pipes, similar to the VW but a bit bigger. But otherwise it’s not too bad from the rear. That luggage rack is part of the same unfortunate tendency of a certain type of VW owner to slap on every type of accessory, most inevitably the roof rack. This is the Porsche version, which again owners today of the real thing would not have, even though there was a time when they were used for genuine luggage hauling.
It wouldn’t be hard to turn this into a much more convincing fake, but then I guess that’s not what owners of fake cars seem to want. It seems they actually want the world to know that it’s a fake, and I can respect the honesty in that. Or am I giving them too much credit?
This one’s the real thing…or my version of a fake.
It’s a complete and good looking kit car, (rare in its own right) and pretty close to home, like finding a knock-off Rolex that’s actually a pretty good watch. The annoyance is in pretending to be something it’s not, rather than what it is, a sporty Beetle update.
I was about to say that a tip off was the starting switch on the right side, and then saw that ther real thing also has it on the right side. When did Porsche adopt their universal left hand starting?
For a brilliant and really enjoyable meditation on authenticity, fakes and authentic fakes, I highly recommend Dave Hickey’s essay on Liberace, called A Rhinestone as Big as The Ritz, in his book Air Guitar.
I don’t know how many companies made replica bodies, but I do remember a company called Intermeccanica (?).
In 1988 or so, they had display at one of the concourses at the Cleveland Hopkins Airport. From the limited information available at the display, you could use a shortened VW chassis or use their tube framed chassis with VW suspension.
Since I frequently used that airport, I spent a lot of time lusting after the car.
Don’t recall all of the particulars, but it seems a starting price for the kit was $10,000 and a completed version was $25,000.
While I did give serious thought to one of these, I never sent away for a brochure.
I’m sure it’s safer from a legal perspective to get the details wrong – there’s probably an argument that doing so proves or implies that the manufacturer has no intent to defraud the buyer into thinking they’re getting the real thing. I think I’m okay with that.
It was a test dammit! 🙂
Doesn’t bug me. A real one is just a spicy VW anyways.
As this car is here in British Columbia I assume it is a Intermecanica which are built here in Vancouver. I visited their operation once years ago and saw very high quality workmanship. They are in no sense a kit car.
The wide whites gave it away first for me too. I could see some dealer fitting them to a real roadster when they were cheaper and trying to snazz it up for a sale 30 years ago, but not in 2020
Habbout that! I just snapped a pic of this ersatz-Porsche the other day as I was waiting to exit the Home Despot car park. The car is regularly parked down there, amidst the decrepit RVs occupied by the down-on-their-luck.
Of you YOU of all people got the shot where the light isn’t missing. I wonder what happened there.
Hrr? I’m confuzzed. I count the same number of lights on the front of the car in my pic as in the cohort pic: two headlamps behind glass behind super-bad-idea mesh, two phake driving lamps, two turn signals.
What am I missing?
It was me, in the Cohort pic the passenger side driving lamp was not noticed by me due to the angle of the shot and the way I read the text had me believing there was only one…Now I see it, my lighting must have been bad earlier!
I always love listening to someone who really knows a certain car tick off details about it, and what’s right or wrong about it. We all have a few that we’re really good at, usually something that we’ve owned and loved. But these have never been part of my inner car circle, so will happily soak up this tutorial.
As replicas go, it’s not awful – I have seen far worse. But yeah – the whitewalls and the luggage rack simply have to go.
And I forgot the door handles… 🙂
I’d rather rock one of these replicas!
One of those kits were featured extensively in herbie goes to Monte Carlo, the proportions are quite weird compared to the real thing, but it fooled me for years watching that movie on VHS
It’s easy to swap the later 4 Lug VWs to 5 Lug – you just change out the front discs and rear drums for the appropriate pattern. I have a set with 5x 130 bolt pattern ready for Fuchs wheels to go on my Ghia. Just need to work out correct tire sizes…..
I would also like a nice replica 356 – trying to get my wife interested in one! A friend has a real early Speedster which is a bit patinated and all the more gorgeous for it….
While the whitewalls are jarring, they pointed my attention to the rims/hubcaps. That was my most obvious clue. Tailpipe was second.
I get the reason these exist and I would not turn one down. Due to California laws, a VW chassis is a must as a complete custom build could not be registered for the street.
There was a program on English TV last week about converting a 356 clone ( Chesil Speedster) into an EV. Obviously not as horrific as sacrificing a real Porsche, but worrying all the same.
Ended up much heavier, thanks to the Tesla batteries, but with a better weight distribution.I had to wonder though how it would fare in a collision, with all that weight in a fibreglass shell.
Car is shown on the Chesil website – with whitewalls …..
This isn’t as egregious as having the Carroll Shelby character in “Ford vs Ferrari” drive a modern 356 replica, with small diameter steering wheel and fat low profile tires, in scenes that took place in the early sixties. But yeah, replica or not, whitewalls and gold trim don’t belong, even on thos otherwise innocuous car.
Interesting, sure looks like an Intermeccanica since their website show cars with those same driving lights and rims.
I sure wouldn’t mind having one. But yes, I’d lose the whitewalls and accessories.
For many, the simple truth is that a replica is the only way they can afford to drive a version of a car that they want but is priced too far out of their range. For a few, the point of a replica is to have a version of an expensive car that they can actually use without fear of damaging it, or just driving the snot out of it for fun, rather than possibly ruining the value of a “real deal” car. That’s what a lot of Shelby Cobras do, allow someone to have a shot at owning and driving one, even if it is not authentic.
And for a Speedster replica, I really liked the one I saw on a show where it was fitted with an EV drivetrain. There was no blasphemy in “ruining” an authentic Speedster, and the company that produced the replicas was the group having the EV drivetrain installed. Now that’s creative!
FWIW, and I’ve never noticed it before, but in the first shot the side profile bears an uncanny resemblance to the side profile of the early Audi TT, especially if you can omit the spoiler on the Audi.
But of course the first TTs didn’t have any spoiler – it was only added after a few accidents….
This reminds me of a story my dad tells of a friend of his who came into a considerable amount of money as a young adult. He bought himself a Porsche, but in their smallish hometown people didn’t know what it was and kept mistaking it for a VW. Thus my reaction to this car was to think that it’s a lot of trouble to turn a VW into a Porsche that can be mistaken for a VW! (Obviously the resemblance is greater when it’s not a convertible or roadster.)
I was asked a few times if my Ghia was a Porche 🙂 I should have done some bodywork to remove the VW from the front!
What’s up with the headlamp cover grilles? Unless one is a serious off-roader or driving through the dystopian civilisation, they are absolutely idiotic and useless. This “Porsche” owner must be thinking the civilisation is coming to end anytime soon and fitted his car with bull bar, auxilary driving lamps, cargo rack, and such for that eventuality…
This reminds me of my friend who wanted to buy a Mercedes-Benz G 500 a few years ago. We went to an independent sales centre in Starnberg (outside Munich) that stocked many G-Class models. Unfortunately, each and every G-Class at that centre had hideous protection grilles screwed on: removing them left the holes in the headlamp bezels. Same with bull bars. The salesman insisted that they were “standard equipment” (yeah, right) and that everyone absolutely loved the “macho look” (not us). So, no sale…
You see the same thing in the US with heavy-duty pickups. If the truck has a popular combination of options, dealers will often tack on all kinds of aftermarket crap, including lift kits and oversized mud tires, which I don’t need nor want when pulling a gooseneck horse trailer.
The headlight cover grilles were quite common back in the day, to avoid broken headlight glass from thrown-up rocks or pebbles on the tracks, if you went racing or rallying. Pretty much all tracks required either the covers, or you had to tape the headlights. The ’53-’55 Corvette came with them as standard equipment.
The “bull bars” were also standard on all US-export Porsches and VWs, thanks to big heavy American cars with big, heavy bumpers. Owners’ complaints about that is what brought that on.
Needs a continental kit.
Which end would you put it ?
Well played, sir. Well played.
A gen-u-wine fake, but I wouldn`t mind having it!
You Guys. I love my 57 Speedster replica drive it every weekend. The best part of it I can drive it without the worry of any thing happening to it. And thats the point to enjoy the ride.