Meet Henk Spin and the mysterious factory sporsche 356 he discovered and restored

This Porsche 356 from 1958 turned out to be a coupé a forgotten factory once with a strange and beautiful background story.

Add to the excitement of buying a new-to-your car comes the unique stories about existence on the road, whether it is a special edition model with rare options or a racing-worthy classic with motorsport significance. And although you would believe that most of these stories would be discovered and advertised to add the value, there are rare occasions that unprecedented stories, for good, unfold by the new owner. When the Dutch collector Henk Spin picked up a weathered Porsche 356, he thought it would be a simple restoration.

But he realized this Porsche Had a story when he started digging through the strange details of the car, such as painted trim, non-standard switches and some unusual handwritten notes. A deep dive in the Archives of Porsche confirmed that this example was one of the only eight ‘Schmidt cars’, built for a quirky German engineer in the late 1950s. The discovery began a ten -year rabbit hole of detecting non -remedied parts, colors and even documentation to bring this one -off white and a phone to the porseline in the porselein 1958.

Reinhard Schmidt, the original owner, was not your average Porsche collector. Working for ATE, he had enough pull to ask the factory for a laundry list with strange functions, most of which would not be seen on production cars for years. Things such as Rally Spotlights, Carrera meters, a Junghans clock through the Tach, Electric Rowield closing rings and a functioning car telephone (which at the time needed its own driver’s license and costs as a second car). The result is a dashboard that looks more like a fighter jet than on a sports car. The car could even be seen in Christophorus in the past and showed off how strange and progressive it was for its time.

Today Spin’s 356 is tucked away in his Porsche -filled garage, surrounded by a Macan, a Cayman S and a soon to be repaired 911 T. But the “Schmidt Car” clearly distinguishes itself from the others. It is the kind of Build that came together with the help of Porsche Classic and many conversations with other obsessive owners and historians. Even the yellow “Versuchswagen” plates had to be replicated from old photos. This was a slow burning research project that brought a very strange Porsche back into the light. And now, 65 years after it left the factory, it finally tells his story again.

Source: Porsche