When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
My first Porsche was this 1962 356 Super 90 purchased in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1972. It was loud, raucous and a total awakening for this big iron boy from Alabama. The last image is of my best friend, the late John Joiner of St. Petersburg, sitting in the "S90" enjoying a cold Busch beer at the 1973 Sebring 12 Hour. There were no better days....
My first Porsche was this 1962 356 Super 90 purchased in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1972. It was loud, raucous and a total awakening for this big iron boy from Alabama. The last image is of my best friend, the late John Joiner of St. Petersburg, sitting in the "S90" enjoying a cold Busch beer at the 1973 Sebring 12 Hour. There were no better days....
I’ve never noticed one with only one exhaust outlet?
The left is missing the bumper and exhaust port. Looks like the right side survived and a Bursch or equivalent is the exhaust.
There's a story there. I was 23 years old and had just moved from Tuscaloosa, AL to St. Pete to teach school. I knew nothing about Porsches other than that I liked them. In fact, I had only purchased one other car in my life. When I purchased the 356, the seller assured me that he would locate the bumper piece but of course, it never materialized. I later learned why as my own efforts to locate the piece proved fruitless.
One day I was sitting in the car down on Sunset Beach and a guy pulled up in a gray 356 A. We started talking and he noticed the missing bumper piece. He said that there was a fire chief that worked in Bessemer, AL that had two warehouses full of old Porsches that he was parting out as a side business and that he might have the piece. Unfortunately, he didn't know the chief's name.
Bessemer was only 15 miles from my mom's house and I had scheduled a trip home to see the Rolling Stones play at the UofA that summer (1972). It didn't seem possible that I could actually find the mythical fire chief, but in desperation, I called the Bessemer Fire Department "long distance" and asked the person that answered the phone if they knew of a chief who sold Porsche parts. He responded, "Oh, that's Chief Davis. Hold on and I'll put you through."
Victory!
Two months later I met him at his storage facility and when he opened the door there were wrecked Porsches, primarily 356's, neatly lined up and down both walls. He walked back to a red cabriolet that had been hit in the rear which ruined the the painted portion of the bumper, but not the chrome pieces. Ten minutes and $25 later, I had the part.
The exhaust in the photo is a Bursch. It came on the car but was in pretty bad shape with a loose baffle that rattled terribly. In a stroke of good luck, a student at the school where I worked decided to see if he could balance himself on the pipe and broke it off. Because it was considered to be vandalism, my insurance company wrote a check for $125 for a new part.
Again, Porsche karma came into play. The next day a colleague told me that he had just had his VW Beetle in the shop for service and saw a used Bursch exhaust sitting in the shop with a FOR SALE sign on it. He inquired about it for his VW and was told it was for a Porsche and he immediately thought of me. I drove up that afternoon and it turned out to be a Schumacher rather than a Bursch, but it was for a 356. I bought it for $50 and installed it myself (I had to buy a metric tool kit on the way home in order to do the job).
I drove the car for a little over two years and then sold it to a guy who lived in Orlando just before I left St. Pete for another stint in graduate school. Since that time, I've owned a 1966 912, a 1997 993 and currently a 2014 987. As you can see from the photo below, that silver 356 left an impression...
02-08-2018, 04:58 PM
