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I have #50032 built November 1952 first registered 23/1/53 sold by max Hoffman New York in his first batch of cars as an official porsche dealership is this the oldest usa dealership supplied coupe 53 model year

Oldest dealership supplied '53, who knows?

Porsche says he was dealer in '50. http://press.porsche.com/news/60_Years/ ... stones.php

back in 2010 porsche did a search for the oldest existing imported porsche to the USA .. as far as i know it's still the strawberry red 52 cab.

see link below

http://www.automobilemag.com/news/this- ... n-us-4807/

As Tom mentions above, Hoffman imported Porsches starting in 1950. He brought his first 2 to Watkins Glen that year. A photo of one below. He imported cars throughout 1951 and 1952. In fact he imported 27% of Porsche's production in 1952.

Tell us a bit more about your car David.

I would expect 50032 to have a Kardex date of early Jan 1953. How do you know it was completed in Nov 1952? Tell us more about your car! Sounds awesome. (I've got a '53 coupe too).

Ha, I’ve got that article car beat. August ‘51 import to and sold by Hoffman.

James Davies wrote:As Tom mentions above, Hoffman imported Porsches starting in 1950. He brought his first 2 to Watkins Glen that year. A photo of one below. He imported cars throughout 1951 and 1952. In fact he imported 27% of Porsche's production in 1952.

Tell us a bit more about your car David.

I would expect 50032 to have a Kardex date of early Jan 1953. How do you know it was completed in Nov 1952? Tell us more about your car! Sounds awesome. (I've got a '53 coupe too).

Hi my kardex says built 1952 it's a 53 model year and sold by Hoffman 23 1 53 it's the 32nd 53 model coupe built there is no way porsche would set to to build that 1st of January 53 ship car to the USA in less than 3 weeks shipping back then was taking approx 6 weeks to the US

TJ Grewal wrote:Ha, I’ve got that article car beat. August ‘51 import to and sold by Hoffman.

Hoffman was importing porsche independently before 1952 but Hoffman was not an official porsche dealership until late 1952.and as I understand he was the first official dealer in the US

David, your information about Hoffman is not quite correct. There's a very nice interview with Max Hoffman in Panorama magazine (June 1980). It lays out the history of Hoffman's relationship with Porsche. His dealership on Park Ave opened in 1947, and he became the sole importer of Porsche into the US, after taking delivery of a couple cars in 1950 and liking them. He sold one of those cars to Briggs Cunningham. Some of this information is in Karl Ludvigsen's "Excellence Was Expected" too.

As for the dates on the Kardex, there's only one date that matters. It will be the date under "ausgel. am", or "delivered on" on the upper left. It's roughly the date the car left the factory on the back of a truck headed to the port for shipping to the USA. Below that, there's also often a date, which is 6 months later, which is when the 6 month factory warranty period ended. The format of these dates is DD.MM.YY.

Generally there's no other information on the pre-A Hoffman Kardex documents that tell you where the car actually ended up in the USA, where it was sold, and who the first owner was. Hoffman imported all the cars sold at dealerships all over the USA. He was both distributor and dealer, as he had his own dealership in NYC (and later Chicago). He imported the cars that were eventually sold in California by John von Neumann for instance, but you would never know it from reading the Kardex. The information is just not there.

Sometimes warranty service is listed on these Kardex, but it is very rare for the pre-A Hoffman ones I've seen. It is handwritten, and sometimes it can provide a clue as to where the car ended up in the USA.

Oh, and that link that Ned posted from Automobile magazine has pretty much everything wrong concerning Hoffman's activities with Porsche. And the 2nd and 4th paragraphs contradict each other. Oh well.

My 11816 is a Hoffman car too. it is an 'interim' 52/53 model that was completed 9/52 and it sold in early december 1952. There are quite a few earlier cars than that. Hoffman bought many cars as James writes.

Here is my Kardex with Hoffman listed, albeit much later.

I'm curious about the jump in serial numbers between the interim 52/53 cars and my August, 1953 completion car. The interim cars I've seen have 11*** numbers and my '53 jumps to 51015.
BTW, I was fortunate to recently reunite my car with the 93 year-old widow of the original owner (long story and film to follow) who told me that it was the first car sold by Jack McAfee Motors in Los Angeles on November 4, 1953.
David

Wow David! Very cool photo and very nice that you were able to get in contact with the original owners. Can't wait to hear the whole story.

As for serial numbers, Porsche never thought they would be building so many cars. Hoffman opened up the US market to Porsche and was selling close to 1/3 of the cars produced by 1953. So the initially-envisaged number schemes Porsche used did not pan out.

The schemes from 1950 to late 1952 are a mess. Feel free to look in Brett Johnson's books and in Specs 3rd edition for details. But suffice to say early on they did not differentiate coupes and cabs and Gläser vs Reutter. Eventually they did, and they pre-allocated ranges of chassis numbers to Reutter coupes, Reutter cabs and Gläser cabs/roadsters.

The simplest explanation for the jump in 1952-53 is that Reutter coupes had been numbered from 10531 on up since 1951. So 11xxx were all Reutter coupes and eventually they got to 120xx at the end of 1952. But there was a problem. They had already used 123xx numbers for Gläser cabriolets in 1952, and they had been using earlier 122xx numbers for spare chassis. So they very quickly needed to come up with a new numbering scheme.

So for 1953 calendar year, they started numbering coupes 50001 on up, and cabriolets 60001 on up. Very simple. So coupe 12084 was probably on the production line on the same day as coupes 5000x. There's no difference in the specs between the cars. Just a jump in chassis number.

In the end, Porsche still screwed up, and ended up using some of the 123xx numbers twice - once in 1952 for Gläser cabriolets and once in 1957 for spare chassis for various T2 cars. There's several dozen cars were this is the case. Eventually they realized it and stopped it. It has caused much hilarity and confusion for Gläser owners ever since. =)