The Porsche 550 is a mid-engine car with an air-cooled four-cylinder engine, following the precedent of the 1948 Porsche 356/1 prototype designed by Ferry Porsche. The mid-engine racing design was further developed with Porsche's 718 model; its advantages led to it becoming the dominant design for top-level racing cars by the mid-1960s.

Sep 18, 2024 · At this point, Porsche felt the 550/1 had reached the end of the line and switched focus to the 550/2 with its tweaked chassis / suspension and four cam motor. Chassis 01 and 02 were refurbished and sold off to Guatemalan-domiciled Czech, Jaroslav Juhan.

Porsche assigned build numbers to each of the 550/1500RS cars built (RS short of rennsport which translates to ‘racing’ in English), with the prototype starting with 2-digit chassis numbers, 550-01 through to 550-15.

Chassis #550-01 In the early 1950s, Porsche’s focus was on making production cars such as the type 356. As competition grew fierce from other manufacturer’s racing endeavours, Porsche realized they would have to enter the race car business as well.

The 550 was created in 1953 with the first 15 builds exclusively for Porsche KG to test and race. 550-01 and 550-02 were built as coupe with a removable hard top which was designed to increase aerodynamics when racing against the goliaths of ’50s motor racing, the D-types and 300 SLRs and the class favourites the Osca coupes, in the day.

Chassis 550-01 was the very first of a long line of purpose-built Porsche racing cars. Following its debut win in the Eifelrennen and outing at Le Mans, it was sold to Jaroslav Juhan in South America.

The 550 was Porsche’s first production racing car. The car was completely street legal, so it could be driven to the races and back home. A really special engine was developed for it, engineered by Ernst Fuhrmann.

One year before Porsche started production of the legendary RS Spyder, they experimented several unique 550 Prototypes. Two of these were fitted with removable hardtops that transformed the diminutive roadster into a sleek coupe.

1953 Porsche 550, chassis 550-001. By the early fifties, Porsche found that modified production cars could no longer win races. The Gmund coupes had ...

Jul 25, 2023 · Porsche juiced #550-01 and #550-02 with 1,500-cc mid-mounted engines and aluminum bodies, giving the lightweight, high-revving roadsters the speed to win their classes at Le Mans and the Nürburgring in 1953.