1951 Porsche 356 SL Gmund Coupe - Jay Leno's Garage

to be in the actual car that won the very first race the Porsche ever ran what a treat this is well another episode of Jay Leno's Garage it's not very often we get automotive royalty on the show but that's what this car is this is a Porsche 356 SL this car is a lamont car this is the car that was there at the dawn of the whole Porsche racing Empire in fact it's one of the very first cars that they raced I can't even put a value on this car because it is such a historically important automobile and it's in private hands right now and it's been restored by our friend rod Emery now you remember right he was here before he had some really cool 356 Outlaws in fact his company coined the term outlaw for Porsches let's meet rod again rock come on and good to see you my friend hi Jay thanks Wow again a lot of piece of history this is this is a Graham um am I saying it right come on go moon come on coupe means it was built in Graz Austria then the very first Porsches were built there right how many did they build well there were 50 road-going cars they were built and they were built in communed Austria and then Porsche made their entry back into Germany in 1950-51 my friend Jerry Seinfeld's got one of the early guman coupes that that was it's an unrestored car but this car is the beginning of the Porsche racing dynasty isn't it it really is in 1950 at the Paris Auto Show the organisers of the 24 Hours of lamont or a car in the 1951 race and at the time Porsche had just begun building their steel bodied cars but they had a handful of leftover bodies that were the aluminum bodies built in mooned so they made the determination that for Lamar they wanted to use one of their aluminum bodies and so what they did is they took those cars they took four of them and did the preparation on the car and testing to develop the cars into race cars so that they could show up at LeMond 1951 with two cars and this particular car the number 46 car was one of those cars and then there was a number 40 car the 47 car crashed a night practice and this particular car entered the race was the only car to enter and they took first place in the 1,100 cc class beat all the 1500 CC cars and finished 20th overall so is it safe to call this the very first racing Porsche yes this is the very first while Horsa to be entered in a race as a company and then the first win for Porsche both you know on an international platform and you know as a company because it begs the question why doesn't Porsche own this car I mean they have the museum you think this would be a point of pride as you go in the door the first automobile but I guess there was just old racing cars that was sold as that what it was they really were and there is a car in the museum that is painted to look like this car it's a representation of of the winning car that particular car is an original 356 SL but it was a car that was entered in 1952 what happened was you know in the early days of Porsche not everything was documented like we do today and after this car competed at la ma it did a rally and then also did some speed record stuff at Mont three and then Porsche prepared the cars and sold them to the US so max Hoffman who was the importer at the time brought the three cars to the US and this particular car was purchased by John von Neumann who was a race car driver true Porsche dealership owner here in Southern California and he raced the car starting well he raced at Pebble Beach at Golden Gate Park and then Torrey Pines and then decided that he wanted to lighten the car up so he cut the roof off hey well well Justin all race guy was an old race car at the time and so the car has been here in California since 1952 with the roof cut off and many everybody has seen the car for years at the Monterey Historics has a little red roadster that a gentleman named Chuck Forge raced for years and Chuck purchased the car in 1957 and raced it and he passed in 2009 so it's been a convertible so obviously didn't find the original roof did you have to fabricate this roof we did so a very good friend of mine and actually my my first client Cameron Healy who I built a car for in my dad and I built a car for him in 1994 he's always been very fond of this car and when we knew that it became available Cameron purchased the car and he loved it as a roadster but when we had a hunch that there was the potential of it being the Lamar winning car we spent a couple of years doing extensive research and both Cameron and myself and a handful of other researchers to really uncover the history of the car because we didn't want to just put a roof back on it because it had so much valuable history right here in California as a race car and once we determined that it was in fact the Lamar winning car then it was time to to figure out how we can make it exactly period back to that point in time as it raced lamaa so so this Porsche recognize it as the Wraith winning car they do so once we presented all the evidence and the information then a good friend of ours helped us present that to Porsche and at that time they invited the car to be on display at Rennsport reunion which was a very large portion of en't in September of 2015 and they had the car on display at rent support reunion in bare aluminum and steel so the car is aluminum body and steel door and chassis x' our chassis and so we actually displayed it at rent sport reunion in bare aluminum and Porsche made that part of their heritage display honoring Lamar I mean when you think of all the times Porsches when Wilma I mean Lamar I associate primarily with Ferrari and Porsche across later outtie and a few others but those and this is the very first one I mean this is the thing that's had they lost that race and got blown out of the water who knows what might have happened but they didn't exactly it's pretty amazing they were victorious and that gave them the confidence to continue on and and it's my understanding that they're the only car company the has entered lamothe every year since 1950 was that right yeah believe so so tell me what was involved in making this roof this is not I mean did you try to find the original sort of aluminum from the period did you mix different you know I'm saying I mean how you don't just put a roof on you don't and the first thing that we had to do was develop the shape because all these cars were slightly different they're all handmade and so there's certain characteristics about the cars that are different so fortunately there are a couple of other cars from the period that still exists that we were able to use 3d scanning technology we used a Faro arm and and some some technology to be able to scan parts of the other cars and then take all of that information and compare it to photographic evidence and be able to determine exactly the shape that we should build and then from there we were able to build the wood buck that we needed to to form the roof so the car is 80% original all the lower aluminum the chassis is all the original steel we had to repair you know a few little rust areas and obviously race damage over the years but the main thing that we had to recreate was from you know this very up so including the dash and the roof the the bumpers the fender skirts and some of the inner structure and we did that by leveraging technology but then going back to traditional methods using power hammers to create it and when it was raised in period it was raised with glass windows was with glass windshield right so the two windshields are glass but all the other windows are acrylic or oh I passed it oh I see okay okay and I like the fact that I know it's a little ding down here but you kept this because the original car had that didn't it yeah so the idea with this car was not to over restore it I mean we wanted to really restore it exactly back to a period in time as it raced and we spent a tremendous amount of time looking at photographic evidence and and and also the the the information that the body told us you know once we stripped all the paint off and discovering stuff but you know the everything down to the door gaps that the hand fit hood the ding as you mentioned here as the car started llama the reason that ding is there is because as you take the skirt on and off it flexes it and so that ding was there as it started LeMond 1951 and it really is automotive archaeology because you need to find these are the exact type of fasteners that they had they are and and so there was a tremendous amount of effort that went into the fasteners on the entire car all the finishes how things were finished now do you have to manufacture your own fasteners we those still exist no we had to manufacture them there's a company actually right here in the valley that that makes some of the screws that we were able to to then put in the lathe and turn down to give it the rest of the finish that we needed but yeah there was a lot of time spent in researching every little fastener every little details even the paint looks it doesn't look like the Pebble Beach Concours paint this is exactly the way it was done this sort of matte flat kind of silver gray it is you know that these were race cars and so you know they finished their testing they painted them they put numbers on them and they went racing and so there's another car in Europe that is being restored and as they were taking that car apart they found an original panel that had been covered with a little bit of under coating so we were able to clean that myself and another individual is restoring one of the other cars we took that information and determined exactly what the paint finish was lightly and then recreated that because it's almost what I call rattle-can paint yeah but I mean I mean it looks got it in a negative way I just mean it doesn't have that concours Pebble Beach I mean it looks like and a racecar paint is not your primary writing so you do a good job you make it look at acquit and it's fine you know but it's excited it almost looks modern in that so many people now are going for that matte black right that silver I almost said my oh is this a modern paint but that's the way they did it it is it's a it's a it's a satin finish not a super glossy finish and I'm amazed how standard or factory standard the interior is there's no rock arrow type light weight bucket seat or anything it's just a nice big comfortable Porsche seat well they were seats that were specifically built for these cars so that the driver's seat is a is a bucket type seat that they created for the SLS and then upholstered originally the seat was vinyl and then this is at a time when they didn't run seat belts and so a first-hand account from one of the the mechanics that was involved in building these cars Herbert Linga informed us that the seat was taken back to Reuter and it was upholstered in a textile material so that it had more grit and just amazing discoveries as we were going through the process of restoration not only a no C felt no roll bar now aluminum roof and even helmets were like helmet that's whether you're gonna crash Larry and I mean they I mean the guys used to smoke cigarettes and drive these things they did and and I mean even the passenger seat it reclines because as they were bringing the car from Germany into France the passenger sheet reclined so that the driver could sleep in the car at night as they were going oh is that a fuel filter that I see is that an oil field well Porsche you know just like today they're big on redundancy making sure that they have what they need to win a race and so there's a few things about this car that you look at and you'll see extras of for one that fuel pump that you're pointing to was an electric fuel pump system so the car just like their regular road going cars have a mechanical fuel pump system this has a valve and an electric fuel pump so that if the mechanical pump was to fail they can turn the electric door just like the windshield wiper there's an extra wiper above the drivers OS windshield yeah that has another wiper in the toolbox in the back so that if those wipers fail then they have another wiping and what is it way it's a class 13 they're roughly thirteen hundred and fifty pounds Oh steel chassis and aluminum panel so that there are a few steel panels on the car the bumpers the doors and these quarter windows are actually steel but the rest of the car is all aluminum now why the need to have this metal ought to get heat out of the car I see there's no window here it's not just covering the window it's okay that's correct so they there's a vent in the front of the car that is operated by a cable so that they can go ahead and get air flow through the car yeah let's take a look at the back of the vehicle come around here well here we are the business end of the car let's look at the rear here a couple of things come to mind what do we have here these are two lights yeah those are both lights to light up the number because this was 1951 and there wasn't much light on the racetrack at Lamar and also there weren't things like amb transponders and things to do the scoring and so it was left up to somebody physically score the car so they wanted to make sure they had the number very well lit it was that the original those the numbers that they ran that is so that is a manufacturers plate so as they drove the car from Germany to Lamar they had to they had to run their plate and so that's the manufacturer plate and the number that the car had on it at that point in time now these early Porsches did they have outside hinges or was it just the race car that had it they didn't so the early demoon 356 has had an internal hinge and latch but Porsche wanted to make sure that the mechanics on pit lane had quick easy access to the engine and they're also flip-over hinges so that if you need to the deck lid will flip all the way over and lay on the back window so that they can get in and make adjustments the running light and the the turn signal light and then the brake light is in the center oh just one brake one brake light okay just slightly early amber for the right-hand side well the cars had different colored lights so that the team knew which car was coming in mousey only started the event with one car but if they if they had two cars those lights helped them to indicate which car was coming in explain this yeah so the decklid itself has additional air vents put in it so they didn't do louvers externally on the decklid like you saw Porsche do on their GT cars later but they knew they needed more air so they actually put these holes in and that was on the build sheet for these cars yeah to punch these holes to allow more air to come now why not just lose this piece all why not just have this just have the brace run here and here why have the two holes there why not just have this open from here to here what was the thinking well it's an aluminum deck lid light and very flimsy and so this along with these two bridges create the structural integrity of exactly so they left that internal inner structure in there but they put those holes in and it's so funny you know you can't really tell an early Porsche race motor from a production motor I mean externally everything looks pretty much the same what are you looking at here about 40 horsepower yeah just just over 40 so about 45 horsepower and and there's a few differences on this engine from the production engines if you if you notice there's the big oil filter console on the back wall which actually has a very large filter is that bigger than stock to idiot so yeah so it's twice the size okay it also has an additional coil on the back wall which was another one of those Porsche redundancy I don't it'll be okay in case they had a problem now how about weather car though so Lexus there so Lexus yes they're there early forty so lex's and the mechanical fuel pump and then electric field correct up front okay 1,100 CC yeah so very small and very similar to the early Volkswagen engine but I know but we always think of racing portions having the hearth crankshaft the the Carrera motor with the exotic but this is a push rod a placed on Volkswagen technology at the time wasn't it it is yeah so it's it's very similar to the Volkswagen technology but it's got dual port heads and and you know better distributor better carburation right right and very cool yeah well let's close this up let's look under the hood okay is there a mechanical release inside no just like the rear decklid everything needed to be able to be accessed and open from the outside on pit lane so Porsche installed hood straps to keep the front bonnet down you know it's funny you always think of pit stops now being three seconds two and a half seconds I mean you think there'd be some quick-release there but no no it was probably one of the mechanics belts that they cut up to create enormous how big is that tank this tank is a roughly 16 gallon that's all looks bigger than that okay there maybe yeah the original tank would have the original Street road-going car tanks we're only about 11 gallons and so Porsche built a special tank for the car and obviously you can fill it without opening the hood correct so the only reason to open the hood really would be to change a tire correct yeah change the tire or access the battery or anything under there right how'd you have your stone guards here protect the lights yeah and what is that there what is that piece of piece of hose here yeah well these are six volt systems so the car you know didn't have a whole lot of light and so Porsche installed fog lights or driving lights in the front and did their best to light the car up as much as possible but when they were making the adjustment obviously they ran out of the adjustment they needed to aim that driving light of Apex so one of the mechanics shoved a piece of hose in there to get it to angled and and because we restored this to aids exact period in time we wanted to make sure that was there did they have to be six volts because production cars are six volts or well that was the everybody knew 12 volts was better obviously even in the 30s you know Bentley was through 12 volts so I'm all surprised at this date with six volts I thought they'd go to 12 in the racing cars I mean is it based on a production vehicle so it must be six volts was that the rule correct and all of Porsche Porsche kept that six volt all the way through the 356 is until the very end right and then they switched over to 12 volt and you can see the hand settling here look at this it's a bit rough in here it's all just kind of hand hammered and and we wanted to make sure when we were restoring this that we left that character because that's how they are even under the hood you can see some of the power hammer marks from when they were making the hood originally so we just wanted to make sure that we that we left all that character that's the way it well this is horn yeah so that hole actually serves as two purposes it the horn is behind there but also the main reason is there's an air vent right below that line that is operated by a cable underneath the dash because you know these cars generate some heat just like all cars do and they had the quarter window vents to get air out this was the air in and they actually put it below the surface so that if there was rain it wasn't going to just come right into the cockpit but this created a whole bumper created see my guess would have been oil cooler yeah but you know these engines the 1,100 cc engine and the way that Porsche developed their fan shroud they didn't generate a tremendous amount of heat and even though they're you know they're oil and air cooled the regular oil cooler on the engine was was good enough oh I see okay so there's no external oil cooler again we have a clear light on this side amber light on the front and that same each team car was different well there yeah it's all black and white photos but we were able to determine that that the colors of those lights were a different color and of course the split windshield which is which most cars had back in the day curved glass didn't really come along until much later yeah it wasn't until 1953 that Porsche started putting a bent windshield in the cars so they're two individual glass wing I was like you gonna rub a windshield after place the whole thing right just place one side cool now we can't really see the wheels four lug five lug there five lugs so just like the Volkswagen and early Porsche bolt pattern drum brakes they actually used the old steel VW drums but they they put or tight drums to isolate liner aluminum alumina finned sleeves that went on the outside to dissipate more heat and I imagine brake fade must have been huge in these back in the day when it was and you know the the the brakes themselves are you know hydraulic brakes the wheels are three and a quarter inch so very narrow by sixteen and not much tires and what was top speed of this car just over a hundred miles an hour 100 miles an hour it averaged 74 miles an hour for a 24 hour in the 24 hour race and traveled just over 1,700 miles Porsche knew that they needed to make this car as slippery as possible but which is why it has these wheel spats on it as well as Aero plates underneath it does have a belly pan it does so there's a belly pan up in the front that goes all the way back to the pedal area and then additional Aero plates behind the rear wheels so they really spend a lot of time trying to make it as slippery as possible well we are going to take this out he's going to take this out for a ride because the value of this car I'm told is 1 gazillion dollars so having me driving oh I'm sorry the truth so we got to take it out but I'm gonna sit in the passenger seat and feel what it's like to ride in the Lamond winning very first Porsche racing car pretty amazing this is going to be cool but let's go over the starting procedure ok let's let's uh it looks pretty much standard Porsche of the period but there are a few things I'm not familiar with so let's take a look at those let's start off with the - go through the controls so Porsche took the standard moon - but configured it a little differently for a race car they put this removable panel here that has all the switches and the kill switch buttons as well as they had to add additional gauges which is why it has this extra planted on gauge cluster okay so this is the the power switch so this turns it on kind of a unique little key it's just more or less a pin right that turns the power on and then we have a start button over here so at the MA they would have turned the power on run to the car and hit the button on this one is what lights is so this is a turn indicator so let's turn indicators okay and then we have the speedometer which is in kilometers and then the generator light the oil pressure light and then the High Beam indicator temperature gauge which is actually operated by a you pull the dipstick out and there's a mechanical dipstick that goes in that movie clip temperature and the tachometer and then this is the windshield washer pump there's actually a pump the bottle over on your right hand side is the glass bottle that held the windshield washer fluid okay and then this knob down here the B that is that air vent for the front so you actually pull it out and twist it to lock it into position so and this one so you've got headlights okay and then you've got a fuel kill switch and that's this one this is the fuel kills okay yes you've got the electronic you know fuel and then this is the fog light switch good and then windshield wiper yeah and then that's the fuel and then this one is the interior light okay and what is this one this is just a cigarette lighter well good have a smoke while you're out there and do they use turn signals at lamothe well but this is a this has to be a street-legal right way carvanha cars in good glove box right here yeah which is a little stiff but I go you go okay okay very good straightforward and the horn teeny alright let's let's start it up okay let's fire it up it's got a lot of camshaft you can hear that it's yeah you know such a small motor that they really did everything they could to get as much power out of it so it doesn't have a whole lot of bottom in right I imagine probably use the brakes right a little one you raise it is because you need all the inertia to keep going don't you ever like racing to me on it yeah yeah momentum right yeah yeah well it's very cool it is the actual car me now really makes it exciting well for me it was an important car to be able and a very special car for me to be able to do the restoration on yeah you know this is Porsches first car that they took one of their road-going cars and modified for racing Ryan and did so many of the things that I've been doing for years on my Outlaws yeah food straps and fog lights yeah you know all those things that people have been giving me a hard time for all the years yeah I got to restore the car that started at all so I guess in a sense what I've been doing all these years really isn't any different than what Porsche did 1981 yeah yeah do you imagine 1,700 miles in this little thing yeah 24 hours well I it's comfortable enough you know it's not like you're out in the elements and you're getting beat up the air actually comes through it's centered and feeling yeah like driving an old tractor well not quite a tractor but it's fun to see that because you know your engine on ovals you want to know what came before that what came before that you know whenever you talk to young kids they want to know about the latest laferrari or p1 or Lamborghini and then as you get more and more educated what came before that let go back to the Miura I know of Lamborghini guys that want to have the tractor because that came before the car you know and this is the whole history the company in a nutshell I mean if this car had not been successful who knows what might have happened you know would have just been another car company like NSU or any of these others that came and went you know so it really is the forerunner well this is a period in time when the adjustment back to Germany it'll just ordered a whole a lot of steel body 356s from Reuter and you can only imagine they put all their eggs in one basket showed up and get on with two cars and the feeling they must have had when they crash the number four Yavin car knowing they were gonna start the race with only one race yeah only one car you mean yeah yeah yeah at the recent only one probably out yeah but you know the level of that German craftsmanship is really something you know even my 63 Carrera 2 the door shuts so perfectly everything works you know you can run incredible mileage in these things there's so many exotic cars at 30,000 miles they're worn out or considered need to be rebuilt where Porsches I see guys unfortunate 160,000 miles on 911 200,000 miles still going strong yeah absolutely I was talking to a guy the other day that that said that there's a car here in California that has been daily driven for over 40 years of 356 they just went a million miles Wow you know it's amazing that they just keep going yeah yeah these tires feel a little flat-spotted yeah it's a-you know they're old you know these the tires easier this is this is the set of tires that was on the rims when we got the car while our other you know they're from the 50s there are vintage set of tires Wow tubes but they were well kept and yeah the idea was that we went when we finished the car and took it to Pebble Beach we wanted to make sure that we had period tires on the 912 a five-speed it was they know they had a four-speed and a five-speed available for a 912 a lot of people like those night swells and they build up the motor yeah they're great you know the 912 Incheon is very similar to the 356 engine it's just the later evolution of it Vienna and then you know you've got guys that are that are really starting to develop those engines like John Wilhoit that you had on your yes yeah into the he puts in his 356 is an amazing engine to be in the actual car that won the very first race the Porsche of Iran what a treat this is well I really appreciate you having us on the show oh yeah yeah thank you thanks for bringing it the owners probably sweat bullets were out driving around in this thing how are the Eternals was the engine pretty good that it need new pistons and everything the mom engine was pulled out after Lomond and then put an engine in it for ball three and liège liège oh and they put a detailed engine and when they sent them here over the US but yeah we had to build the engine transmission and all the brakes find all those parts and components that we're long gone on the car we need to recreate the dashboard glovebox all those details automotive archaeology was a big part of this car because there was so many unanswered questions so many things that needed to be discovered not only on this car but also the other cars that surrounded this because in order for us to be confident in knowing what the history of this car was we needed to know that the other cars that put together and the fun thing is being a Porsche you could ride this anywhere yeah you can drive this to look good to think if you wanted you could I would have thought the brakes will overheat with those side skirts on the front well but I don't know if you took a look and saw how in bored those front wheels are from the skirt oh is the oh honey radius are actually quite a bit of flow but the way that they did be so they used a drum like the early the earliest Porsche drum corps VW type steel drum but they pressed an aluminum sleeve over them with pins on it to disobey Him you ik exactly Oh a cadet Finn so it was all to just help dissipate that heat I don't see what it feels like a job not that it goes that fast but it's geared pretty high because they wanted to be able to you know get that top speed yeah and we're gonna meet the owner of this automobile he's uh been sweating bullets watching us drive around this is the owner Cameron Hayley Cameron how are you I'm great Jay now you're great now that we stopped breathing easier where you sweating bullets really a little nervous sweating I was enjoyed as watching in motion I mean a car like there's an LA traffic this is probably the most expensive car in the history of LA traffic so well I don't know about that but what I was watching every car went by me but it was this the dream Porsche you always wanted this was you know there's a lot of dream Porsches I've had but just one because Lamar is such a great historical event and because this of this has that Lamar original Maestri this this is by far the most interesting where I've been involved with it is there any chance this car will ever go back to them all well Jay that's the dream is you take it back to Lamar for the 24 hours and do a lap of Honor in it I'd love to drive it around for that being that it's Porsches first first time at Lamar and how it's such a Porsche such an important part of Lamar history well thanks for saving a great piece of automotive history and rod thanks to doing a wonderful restoration I mean it's almost impossible to mount to guess how many hours three thousand hour I don't I can't imagine there was probably three thousand hours in automotive archaeology yeah in validating everything and then there was the restroom okay so remember the camera star these things over weekend like you see on a lot of those other show okay it takes a long time I'll see you guys next week thanks [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 1,031,784

Keywords: jay lenos garage, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: AzMWgXgM3EM

Length: 33min 42sec (2022 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 09 2016