Porsche-tagged vintage car is 9 years older than Porsche itself

A Type 64 sports car will soon go under the hammer at Sotheby’s which some media claim is ‘Porsche’s first vehicle ever’. The German luxury marque opposes this by saying that Ferdinand Porsche originally built the vehicle for Volkswagen AG based on the KdF-Wagen (later known as the Beetle) chassis in 1939. The brand name Porsche only emerged in 1948.

A total of three such cars were built and one claimed by its original designer. In 1946, Ferdinand Porsche attached a nameplate to the vehicle bearing his last name. Now, this very car goes on sale estimated at U.S. $20,000,000 for starting price. Porsche insists that calling the Type 64 its first car would be incorrect, since the brand did not even exist when it came out. The company says the 356 Roadster assembled in 1948 is the ‘true’ firstborn of the marque.

In the end, Sotheby’s seems to have found a clever solution to the dispute: the Type 64 is currently being advertised as ‘the oldest car with the Porsche letters on it’.