PORSCHE 356 MADE BY REUTTER

The long and successful cooperation between Porsche and the „Stuttgarter Karosseriewerk Reutter & Co. GmbH“ was right from its beginning more than only a marriage of convenience. It was based on mutual sympathy of two unique companies within the automotive industry. Already in 1931 the Reutter coachwork company, founded in 1906, started building first prototypes of the later called Volkswagen on behalf of the Porsche engineering office. In 1949 Porsche gave order to Reutter to produce 500 bodies for the Porsche sports car and around Easter time 1950 the first Porsche 356 ever being constructed in Germany was finished in Reutter’s factory I. Porsche bought ground from Reutter within the plot of its factory II in order to build a new construction site for manufacturing motors. At the same time Reutter moved the complete bodywork to factory II in Zuffenhausen and from that moment most of the legendary Porsche 356 were manufactured in intensive cooperation and side by side.Besides those vehicles made by hand in serial-production the book presents a lot of prototypes and special cars made for Porsche up to the point of collective evolution of the later called Porsche type 911.The book’s focus is put on the description of the development of a Porsche 356-body, illustrated as colourful and detailed as never before.A lot of material used was taken out of the pool of the Reutter-family archive. So far unpublished documents and pictures were found in several institutional and private archives, especially the archive of Porsche itself. A book highly valuable for all those interested in background information and insider knowledge.