Carrera GT Interior

[Bil Brown]

Thanks Dick

[Dick Roth]

It's just a little hard to see, but you can note the doortops on my 59GSGT coupe. I sold this car to Road Scholars, and it suffered an unfortunate fate when the roof fell on it in a terrible gas explosion. It is however being restored by Porsche Classic in Holland as we speak... I expect it to rise like Phoenix from the ashes. A seminal example-4th overall in the 1959 Tour de France behind 3 SWB Berlinettas.

[Bil Brown]

Yeah, I`ve followed your car`s story for years.....those A GT Coupes are rare birds!

[Harlan Halsey]

Bill, All the doortops on 356A's are steel. Period.

Since my door tops are vinyl covered, they look just like ordinary steel ones. However, a magnet which sticks strongly to the vinyl covered ones in my Convertible D doesn't stick to the door tops in my 1959 GT Carrera. I'm not about to strip the vinyl off to see, but I recall these as being wood. The tops under the quarter windows were omitted. These door tops were on the car when acquired it in 1977. Besides the end screws, these tops are screwed to the door panel below so the whole interior panel comes off in one piece.

[Martin Benade]

Maybe they are aluminum. Removing one screw would allow you to see. This is merely a thought, not anything I know about.

[Harlan Halsey]

Martin,
In building these GT cars Porsche replaced several steel pieces with aluminum ones. So your suggestion is quite reasonable. However the door tops in my car are wood. Since we restored this basket case in the late 1970s, I just thought I'd check to see if my recollection is correct, and it is. Since I am not he original purchaser of this car, I cannot say with certainty that it was delivered this way. But since I know who the previous owners were, I think it highly unlikely that any of them would have modified the door tops.
Maybe I should strip the covering, refinish the wood door tops, and tell everybody the car is a Mercedes Benz?

[Joris Koning]

It is however being restored by Porsche Classic in Holland as we speak... I expect it to rise like Phoenix from the ashes. A seminal example-4th overall in the 1959 Tour de France behind 3 SWB Berlinettas.

Dick, I looked at the car a couple of months back. They had stripped all the exterior panels off and were working on the "rurhbau" Fantastic car, wish I could had purchased it but I was lazy in following the copart auction. Can only blame myself

[Dick Roth]

Joris, It certainly is a fantastic car and hopefully Frans is going to be a great caretaker. I expect that he will. He has invited me to come to Amsterdam to drive the car when it is complete, and I just may take them up on that. More to the point, I'm really excited to see what it's going to look like. Short of special variants like the Abarth, I've always believed that this is the ultimate 356, certainly with the basic Komenda formsprache...