Only a few insiders know that production of the Porsche 356 models would probably never have started without the Swiss Rupprecht von Senger - he ordered the first five vehicles ever in 1948 and secured an option for a further fifty. But above all, he ensured that the very young brand was on show for the first time at the Geneva Motor Show.
It's an interesting question: where would Porsche be today without Switzerland, without the Geneva Motor Show? To understand the charm of this question, we should go back to the year 1948: 70 years ago, at the beginning of July, the then still very young company presented the very first Porsche before the Swiss Grand Prix. More precisely, the 356/1, the mid-engine sports car with chassis number 356-001, which Ferry Porsche had built as the first 356 type between 1947 and 1948 and which received its operating license in Gmünd on June 8, 1948 and the registration number K - 45 286 on June 15.
The journalists in Bern were enthusiastic and Motor und Sport (the predecessor of auto motor und sport) praised the first 356 as a "cross between a Volkswagen and an Auto-Union racing car for the sports car class". And the Berner Automobil-Revue wrote on July 7, 1948: "As a test car, Porsche initially built a two-seater open sports car, which we chased around the Bremgarten circuit before the Swiss GP, and in a very short time we gained complete confidence. That really is how you imagine the driving characteristics of a modern car."
And you could hear how it sounded at the Porsche Sound Night 2015.
The rest is history and the then small company has grown into a huge enterprise that almost took over Volkswagen just a few years ago. The fact that Porsche today builds more four-door cars than sports cars probably only bothers the traditionalists.
