After 356 comes 357. It took 58 years and a party for Porsche to find out. The 357 is a birthday present from Porsche to itself.
After an uninterrupted start attempt of exactly 25 seconds, the 1.6-litre four-cylinder finally fires up. First some bubbling and coughing, then he lets us know with a hoarse, but cheerfully crackling boxer roll that he is in a great mood. The Porsche four-cylinder sounds like a Beetle engine that has been rudely awakened from sleep after a night’s sleep. A bit hoarse, but there is no question of a hangover.
No, this is (obviously) not the Porsche Vision 357 we’re talking about. They are memories of a ride in his ancestor, the Porsche 356 (1948-1965), which today looks touching and fragile. You can’t say that about the Porsche Vision 357. It is a homage to 75 years of Porsche, and actually also to Ferry Porsche’s sports car dream.
Electric Porsche 357? No, a six-cylinder!
The Vision 357 does not have a crackling boxer engine behind the front seats, but also no electric motor. Porsche ‘just’ opted for an internal combustion engine. The 500 hp six-cylinder from the Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 RS was chosen. It was extensively overhauled, so that it can run on synthetic fuels.
And to immediately spoil the party of Porsche: the Vision 357 will (unfortunately) not go into production. The advantage is that this gave the designers complete freedom. Safety requirements? Let EuroNCAP get the back-and-forth. All the design team had to think about was what the 356 would look like if it hadn’t been conceived in the 1940s, but in 2023.
Do we see something of the 357 on the new 911?
Connoisseurs will immediately see the similarities with the 356. The cramped cabin, the sloping roofline, but especially the windscreen that seems to wrap around the A-pillars; they are all fat and less fat nods to the primal Porsche. The Vision 357 does have ‘just’ one windscreen, while the 356 had one in its first four years of production. split window had. The A-pillars are black, so that the windscreen seems to form one whole with the side windows.
Perhaps our favorite detail is the rear air vent – again you don’t have to look far to see the similarities to the 356. On the other hand, the door handles integrated into the doors and the light units integrated into the body at the rear are very modern. As the original also did not have 20-inch wheels … The side mirrors have been replaced by cameras on the Vision 357, as on the Audi Q8 e-tron. There is a good chance that the real mirrors will also be hung on the willows in the next generation of the Porsche 911.
The Porsche Vision 357 can be seen at the Volkswagen Forum in Berlin until mid-February. Numerous festivities will take place there until September 10 to celebrate 75 years of Porsche.