In 2009 Porsche released the Panamera, a 4-door sedan with a design very closely related to the Porsche 911. Many thought this was the first 4-door Porsche sedan ever made but it actually wasn’t, thanks to a slightly offbeat Texan named Dr. William Dick who was a Porsche dealer in San Antonio in the late 1960s. Dr Dick’s car collection included a number of Porsches, Ferraris and a Rolls-Royce however none of the cars had 4 doors – in order to placate his wife the good doctor decided to create a stretched wheelbase 911 based on a factory fresh 1967 model.
He dispatched the dealership’s manager to Italy to visit each of the major Italian coachbuilders and see if they would accept the project, all except one turned him down. There’s no record of which coachbuilder took the project on but they spent a couple of weeks drawing up designs which were duly returned to San Antonio.
Troutman-Barnes of Culver City, California were chosen to turn the designs into reality and so they set to work in the summer of ’67. The wheelbase was extended and the original 911’s doors were removed and switched to the opposite side as the new rear doors, new front doors were fabricated and a new interior was fitted. The whole project cost slightly more than a new 4-door Rolls-Royce but it was an entirely new, unique car that Porsche themselves would emulate over 40 years later.
Apparently no one knows where this car is, so if you’ve seen it around make sure to shoot us an email so we can follow it up.
Additional information via Hagerty.
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Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
