In 1959 Porsche only built 3 right hand drive 356A 1600GTs, today it’s thought that only 2 of those still survive and this car is one of them. It was ordered by the South African Porsche factory-backed driver, Ian Fraser-Jones who is thought to have fitted it with the Type 547/3 Carrera 4-cam race engine, almost certainly from his own Porsche RSK Spyder.
Porsche had delivered the car with its matching number 1600S push-rod engine and transmission so after the car had been campaigned across South Africa in races like the Lourence Marque and Johannesburg 9 hours, it was fitted with its original engine and sold on to a new owner.
The Porsche 356A 1600 GT is highly prized for its sporting prowess, as a GT variant it was fitted with lightweight aluminium doors, plexiglass side and rear windows, the bonnet and engine lid were also formed from lightweight aluminium and the engine lid also had hand-shaped air ducts to the underside to feed the carburettors.
Over the course of its history this particular car has been well cared for, it was part of the Graf von Donhoff Collection (in Germany) for a number of years before being acquired by a Californian who commissioned a comprehensive, high-quality restoration.
In more recent years the 356A was imported into Britain where it’s been prized for the right hand drive layout and it’s now currently for sale via Maxted-Page. If you’d like to read the full history of the 356A or enquire after it, you can click here.
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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.
