AUTHOR     Carney, Mertans

    ENGLISH

ISBN 10     NO ISBN 10

ISBN 13     9781616236236

OUT OF PRINT AND NO LONGER AVAILABLE @ BLOCKS BOOKS

FROM MY REVIEWS IN THE 356 REGISTRY:

One of the pleasures of belonging to the 356 Registry is sooner or later someone will tackle a difficult question.  In the early years the factory had many challenges – one it choose not to tackle was worrying about serial numbers. Partially for convenience, partially to avoid tariffs when crossing borders, the factory renumbered cars with abandon during the early years. Now more than 50 years later, it is worse than unclear as to which Gmünd coupes are which.  Phil Carney, known for exceptional articles on Porsche’s prewar and early days as a company has joined with Jacques Metens, Belgium Gmünd historian, in trying to piece together the early history of these cars in The Last Eleven – The First Porsche Factory Race Cars.  Eleven race cars is a reasonable estimate of how many Gmünd SLs were built given the contradictory statements made – Phil and Jacques acknowledge Von Frankenburg wrote that one race car was built of the two coupes wrecked in practice prior to the 1951 LeMans race, but examination of the photographs leads to the conclusion that only their mechanical parts were salvaged and an entirely new chassis must have been built. 

Most of the book is devoted to the racing history of the Gmünd SL, along with the explanation that several of the eleven were not truly Gmünd SLs, but customer race cars, not finished to full specifications.  This part is already fairly well documented in the better histories by Ludvigsen and Conradt.  However there are several photographs not previously printed.  If you have attended one of Dave Seeland’s (past 4-cam columnist for the 356 Registry) 356SL presentations, you might remember the photograph on also printed page 26 of the Last Eleven of Hild, Von Hanstein, von Frankenburg and Müller looking into a 356SL.  Several points immediately come to my mind.  The picture is in the 1952 LeMans section, but a photograph page 6 identified as 1951 shows the same four; clearly the same day – Huschke is wearing the same sport coat and Hild the same sweater.  Probably the two photographs are actually from 1952  -- Petermax Müller did not drive for Porsche in 1951 but did in 1952. Based on the small dent seen both in the sill on the Gmünd SL on page 26 and on his car that Dave has concluded they are they are one in the same. 

The final section is devoted to trying to piece the chassis histories together.  Continuing with Dave’s car the authors note that it is “Probably chassis 356/2-058” but also note that it bears serial number 356/2-055 but the last 5 is stamped over a ground-off final digit.  The body number of 806/40 is still obvious, which would tend to be associated with chassis 356/2-051 of 356/2-053.  If the photograph on page 26 is really Dave’s car, and was taken in 1952 why is the roof not chopped as it was during the 1952 race?  I am surprised to see no mention of Dave’s research.

Finally, the proof reading is inadequate.  On one page we told that Gilberte Thirion’s mid-engine Gmünd SL was destroyed in a traffic accident, but in the chassis section it actually belongs to co-author Jacque Mertans and is nearing completion.  More distressing is a punctuation problem – scattered through the book are commas, which do not follow a work immediately but are separated by as space; resulting in new lines starting with a comma then a space.

The First Porsche Factory Race Cars  was limited to a printing of 200 books at $74.95 and 50 autographed copies with a CD of home movies taken by Ed Trago of racing, some of which feature the 356SL at $95.00.  By now they are probably sold out.  Given the amount of work already expended, I await edition two which should address some of the questions raised by the book and its proof-reading problems.