1958 Porsche 356A (T2) Speedster

In 2010 our client who had commissioned us to perform our second restoration ever, a 1963 356B Carrera 2, was looking to add a 356 Speedster to his collection. We sourced a three-owner, 1958 356A Speedster that had spent its entire life in California to begin the restoration with. It had been used as a race car by its last owner. It had a roll bar installed and there had been some metal from the rear valence cut away to fit a race exhaust, but showed no significant damage otherwise and still retained its original numbers matching doors, hood, and engine lid.

Excerpt from Peter Linsky's 2013 Panorama article about Chassis #83873

“Little is known of 83873's earliest history; but for our purposes, it came to light in late 1971 when it was offered for sale in the Los Angeles Times used car classifieds. The ad caught the attention of John Wilson, a 23-year-old restaurant manager living in the San Diego area. He had already owned a '64 356SC while attending San Diego State, but sold it in 1971, leaving something of a void in his automotive world. One morning, as he was making a doughnut run for his work crew, he paused to grab a copy of the Times, something he did only a few times a year. It proved to be a fateful decision. Scanning the automobile ads over coffee, he spotted a 1958 Speedster offered for sale, but rather than being in the greater Los Angeles area, the car was located just a few miles away in the San Diego neighborhood of Pacific Beach. Intrigued, he called the listed number and spoke to the seller, whose name he recalls only as “Barry”. He quickly determined that Barry lived right across the street from John's own brother (“I don't know how many times I'd turned around in the guy's driveway”, he remembers). After work that day, John drove over to Pacific Beach to look at the Porsche, which was stored beneath a tarpaulin in Barry's backyard. John's initial impressions of the bright yellow car were that it was a typical SoCal canyon-carver, set up for autocrossing with a full-width roll bar, flared fenders, and wide aluminum wheels. Chromed nerf bars had replaced the original bumpers, but all the other pieces seemed to be there.”