Cars - Porsche 550

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	Cars - Porsche 550

The Porsche 550 was a sports car automobile produced by Porsche during the 1950s.

The 550 was the first Porsche designed specifically for use in auto racing. It became known as Spyder or RS, and gave Porsche its first overall win in a major sports car racing event, the 1956 Targa Florio.

Its successor, the Porsche 718, was even more successful from 1957 on.

History

Introduced in 1953 at the Paris Motor Show, the 550 featured an aluminum body wrapped over a tubular ladder chassis with a mid/rear mounted, 1.5 litre, air-cooled flat-four engine. Although 2 units were produced with a modified OHV Volkswagen engine, Porsche's "Type 547" engine, designed by Dr. Ernst Fuhrmann was standard fare for all other 550s. The unit was very advanced for its day, as it had four camshafts that were all driven by the crankshaft, helping provide 110 bhp (very strong for a vehicle of such light weight). With the quad-cam engine powering it, the 550 was capable of performance very comparable to—and in many cases better than—Ferrari and Jaguar models with larger engines. The particularly rare 356 Carrera model was the only other Porsche vehicle ever to feature this powerplant.

Although Porsche had raced with the 356 for several years already, the 550 was distinct in that it was the company's first purpose-built racecar. The factory successfully campaigned the 550 in international auto racing, headed by the vehicle's premier win at the 1954 24 Hours of Le Mans, where it won its class.

Later that year Porsche began a production run of customer cars, building 90 units in total before replacing the original 550 with the extensively reworked 550A in 1956.

The 550A variant sported various improvements over the outgoing model, including a spaceframe chassis, the latest version of the Fuhrmann four-cam engine mated to a five-speed transmission, and a multi-link rear suspension setup which reduced oversteer and improved handling.

Replicas

The 550 is among the most frequently reproduced classic automobiles, like the Shelby Cobra and Lotus Seven. Several companies have sprung up in the last 25 years, some of which build near-exact replicas from the ground up, including spaceframes built to exacting specs from Porsche blueprints.

550 Spyder Category:Mid-engined vehicles Category:Rear wheel drive vehicles Category:Sports cars

Trivia

This was the car that James Dean was driving when he crashed and was killed.
The modern Porsche Boxster
is considered a descendant of the Porsche 550.
This car can be found in Microsoft's Project Gotham Racing 2

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Porsche 550 ]

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Cars - Porsche 550

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