Luciano is a lifelong automobile enthusiast, and judging by his collection, has quite eclectic tastes. He’s got a number of oddball cars tucked in his garage, everything from a Ferrari to a Mini, and some relatively unknowns in the form of a Giannini, and an Iso Rivolta Competizione. The thing that interests us most, however, is his claim that he once owned the worlds oldest Porsche.
When he bought the “Gmund” car claimed to be 356/2 #004, it’d been left behind at a garage for years, the previous owner nowhere to be found. He’d come to a deal with the shop owner to buy the car. It was not known even then to be a real Porsche, stating it looked “like an artisan wanted to build a Porsche by hand.” A small sum was paid, and Luciano took delivery.
A decade later, Mr. Rupolo was visiting the Porsche museum when he spotted another Gmund car, and upon noting that the car shared some features with his own, he began to dig a little deeper. Correspondence with Porsche began to reveal some details, and they embarked on a restoration project, returning the car to its former glory.
While his claim that his car was the “oldest Porsche” are unfounded, if only because of the 356/1 mid-engine open-top prototype, his car was certainly a very early model. If it was, in fact, built in 1948, that would place it in the first four 356/2s built, as he says. Being an aluminum-bodied car among the original run of Austrian built Porsches, it certainly must be worth quite a pretty penny.
Rupolo later sold the car, but I’ll let him tell you that story. It sounds better in his native Italian, anyhow. The video details Luciano’s full range of automotive insanity, and begins with a few of his other passions before arriving at the story of the Porsche. If you are only interested in Porsche #004, start the video at about 10:04.
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