Porsche 356 to 911: the missing link?

It is common knowledge even among general car enthusiasts that the car known today as the Porsche 911 first appeared 60 years ago in 1963. Among Ti subscribers, a little more knowledge may be presumed.

You’ll probably know that appearance took place at the Frankfurt Motor Show, possibly that it was in September of that year and certainly that Porsche originally intended it to be called the 901, only changing the central number when Peugeot defended its copyright on all car names comprising a three-digit number with a zero in the middle. Fortunate that: ‘911’ may require one more syllable than ‘901’ but it somehow trips rather more lightly off the tongue, a happy turn of events for those who’ve been saying it for what is now something approaching a lifetime.

But how much, I wonder, do even the most committed Porsche-philes know about not only how the car got that way, but how that flat-six motor ended up in its engine bay?