The wrong direction
The rumour has it that Zagato has bought up half a dozen chassis numbers from decaying Porsche 356s. And is now building six examples of the Porsche 356 B/1600 GS Carrera GTL around these numbers. Well, something is going in the wrong direction. It’s yet another stupid game from Zagato, old car, new body – which once again opens the door to false expectations. Because you can assume that these six examples will probably be passed off as “genuine” in a few years’ time. Which is unlikely to please the owners (including the Porsche Museum) of the genuine Carrera Abarth – and certainly won’t simplify the whole story. But above all: Zagato has nothing to do with the Porsche 356 B/1600 GS Carrera GTL – nothing! What the Italians are doing under the leadership of Andrea Zagato can only be described as the worst form of cultural appropriation.
But let’s look back first: they knew each other, Carlo Abarth had once been married to Anton Piëch’s secretary, who in turn was married to Ferdinand Porsche’s sister. It was probably this acquaintance that led to the co-operation between Porsche and Cisitalia, and the Austrian Abarth also became Porsche’s representative in Italy at an early stage. In 1959, the Stuttgart-based company knocked on his door again – they urgently needed a sports car based on the 356, but one that was lighter and faster than the previous models.
They had a fine engine, the Fuhrmann engine (project number 547), two overhead camshafts driven by king shafts per cylinder bank, dual ignition, dry sump lubrication, initially 1.5 litres, then 1.6 litres capacity (design number 692). The engine was good for 105 hp in the road version, 115 hp in the GT version and up to 135 hp in the racing version. However, Porsche did not want Abarth to tune the engine or refine the exhaust system, but rather to design it: Design.
Abarth was unable to do this himself, so he turned to Franco Scaglione. He drew him a very aerodynamic outer skin, which was significantly lighter than the lightest Reutter bodies (which explains the L in GTL); a Carrera Abarth weighed 780 kilos. Zagato had endeavoured to win the contract, but they fell out before it even got that far. Apparently, the first bodies were then knocked into shape at Viarenzo & Filliponi in Turin, and later the more experienced Rocco Motto is said to have taken over. When the first Abarth prototype arrived in Stuttgart, Porsche first went into intensive reworking. In addition to addressing the qualitative defects, the engine in particular had to have more air, which explains the wildly jagged rear end of this Carrera Abarth.
Abarth delivered exactly 20 of them from Italy to Germany. At 25,000 Deutschmarks, the price was horrendous by the standards of the time, but the Carrera Abarth sold like hot cakes; two vehicles were used by the factory. And they were virtually unbeatable in their racing class from 1960 to 1963, winning world championship titles and class victories at Le Mans, and years later they were still feared both in regional circuit races and on the mountain.
It is interesting to note that all of the 20 vehicles still exist today. Although vehicle #1002 was destroyed in an accident, it was later rebuilt. No, we don’t want to write anything about money in this context. The vehicle we are showing here is in the marvellous Revs Institute in the USA and once belonged to Swiss driver Siegfried Lang. It was entered in Le Mans in 1960 and was really fast under Linge/Walter, but there was a problem: the Carrera Abarth was very leaky at the top (Italy) – and too leaky at the bottom (Germany). However, because the race was held in pouring rain, the two drivers were sometimes ankle-deep in water. Which didn’t improve their performance.
Back to Zagato: It’s interesting that the official Porsche website mentions Zagato as the manufacturer of the bodywork (which is definitely not true). This could simply be a mistake – or then, no, we don’t want to imagine it. Zagato itself has experience in recreating Porsches: in 2012, a never exactly communicated number of “Sanction Lost” were created based on a never-realised drawing of a 356 coupé and the famous Storez roadster. The Italians also produced replicas of the far more famous Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato.
We have a nice summary of “75 years of Abarth” (sorry, just in German). And also the archive.
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