Pre-A Production Numbers

[James Davies]

Thought I would start a thread on production numbers. These numbers come from Auto Motor und Sport magazine, which published these numbers for all German car manufacturers' models four times a year. If you have any of these old magazines and would like to contribute, please do. I'll update the original post at the top here.

1952
Jan 97
Feb 84
Mar 87
Apr 52
May 126
Jun 140
Jul 142
Aug 130
Sep 79

EDIT: Added a photo to show what these tables look like in the magazine.

[Hendrik Moulds]

Interesting, no breakdown on the numbers I suppose?
I don't have any of the magazines I'm afraid.

[James Davies]

No, no breakdown by coupe or cab for each month unfortunately.

[James Davies]

Here's some export figures in 1952 taken from Porsche's both at the Frankfurt Auto Show in 1953.

26.98% USA
9.78 Switzerland
6.03 Belgium
3.21 France
2.90 Sweden
1.68 Portugal
0.91 Italy
0.68 Morocco
0.61 Brasil
0.53 Netherlands
0.30 Canada
0.22 Ireland
0.15 Uruguay
0.15 Finland
0.15 England
0.15 Denmark
0.15 Luxembourg
0.15 Egypt
0.07 Australia
0.07 South Africa
0.07 Tunisia
0.07 Norway
0.07 Austria
0.07 ???
0.07 ???

It looks like the smallest number is 0.07% from what I can read, which I take as being a single car exported. This implies that ~1429 cars were built in 1952.

Also the numbers imply that 44.86% of cars were domestic German cars.

Compared to Barry Brisco's chart here

https://porsche356registry.org/article/244

the numbers are quite different - 798 cars in 1952. I believe Larry's chart is based on model years as defined by Brett Johnson, which gives the 1952 model year a very short time from April '52 through Sep '52. The data above is for the calendar year I suspect.

If we use the numbers at the top of this page which show monthly production figures for the first 9 months of 1952 and project them out for the remainder of the year, we get 1250, a number much closer to the Frankfurt Auto Show figures. Given that they ramped up production to closer to 150 cars a month for 1953, it's not surprising we underestimate.

So production numbers did not actually dip in 1952.

Rudi Mailander photo below.

[Alan Hall]

Neat photo James!! If we use the U.S. percentage as having the most significant figures, I think we can show the total production was probably 1431 cars with 386 going to the U.S.

[James Davies]

*forehead slap*

Thanks Alan!