Porsche Spyder Traditional Cache
Mapachi: I didn't want to archive tis, but the hidding place has broken!
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Placed as Part of the Central Maine Power Run by the Power
Rangers.
This is a salt shaker hidden differently then other caches in this
series. It contains just a log.
Porsche 550 Spyder
I owned a 1958 Porsche Spyder when I was in Germany. Wow! This was
probably more car then I could handle at the time, but before I
could kill myself in it, it developed problems that were more
costly then I could afford. It was the fastest car I ever
owned.
It is hard to separate the Porsche 550 Spyder from the legend of
actor James Dean, so why don't we get it all out of the way right
now. On September 30, 1955, Dean, fresh off the film - Giant, -
left George Barris's shop in Los Angeles to go racing in Salinas, a
farm town inland of Monterrey made famous by John Steinbeck. (Dean,
of course, had recently starred in the movie of Steinbeck's novel
East of Eden, set in the same area.) The young actor was at the
wheel of his Porsche 550 Spyder called "Little Bastard," a term
that Dean might well have applied to himself.
By that time, Dean had done more than a little racing. A Porsche
fan, he had just traded his 356 for the racier, LeMans-winning 550
Spyder, and he was desirous of testing its mettle (and his own) on
the track in Salinas. But as he drove toward the sun on that late
Friday afternoon along Highway 46, a student at Cal Poly San Luis
Obispo, Donald Turnupseed, was driving home in his 1950 Ford. Not
seeing Dean's car in the twilight, Turnupseed turned into the path
of the actor's speeding car, and, with little time to react, the
550 Spyder crashed headlong into the Ford. Dean's side of the
Porsche got the worst of it, and he was killed instantly. His
mechanic, Rolf Wütherich, who was riding shotgun, was thrown from
the wreck and survived with a smashed jaw, a broken leg, and
multiple contusions, cuts and abrasions. Turnupseed, who escaped
with just a gash in his forehead and a bruised nose, was not
charged by the California Highway Patrol officers who investigated
the accident. They reasoned that the glare from the setting sun
made it impossible for him to see Dean's rapidly approaching car,
and when I recreated Dean's drive for a 1985 - Motor Trend -
article, I encountered the same conditions, so I can attest to the
decision of the police.
The tragic crash spelled the end for a legendary actor who seemed
always to be plunging forward toward oblivion, but it marked just
the mid-point in the fabled success of the 550 Spyder. Born of
Porsche's desire to gain publicity (and sales) by winning in the
world's most prestigious races, the 550 Spyder still had two more
years of race wins ahead of it.
Though the Porsche name had been associated with topnotch
automotive engineering since right after the turn of the 20th
Century, the first car to bear the Porsche name wasn't built until
after World War II. Emerging from Allied captivity, Ferry Porsche,
son of famed auto engineer, Ferdinand Porsche, returned to Gmund,
Austria, to pick up the pieces of his shattered company and toy
with the idea of building a sports car based on available
components, mostly from Volkswagen.
The car he drew up, the first to bear the Porsche name, used a very
rigid welded space frame and positioned its diminutive air-cooled
engine amidships, just ahead of the rear axle. This, of course, was
the configuration that would be used to great effect in the 550
Spyder. Porsche's Gmund-based group assembled a running prototype
of the little roadster in June 1948, and it was shown off to the
gathered press at the Swiss Grand Prix one month later. The press
was wowed by the vehicle, which was called the 356 because that was
the number of the design in the company's organization scheme. The
public seemed quite willing to buy, but Porsche realized that
making his little sportster a commercial success would be
difficult, because the hand-hammered aluminum skin over the space
frame would be cost-prohibitive. So Porsche wasted no time in
drawing up a completely different chassis that significantly
altered the basic layout of the car. Rather than a space frame, the
new car had a monocoque chassis formed from sheet steel, and the
midships engine placement was jettisoned in favor of a rear-engine
layout. This served to open the cabin space, and simplified the
installation of the modified Volkswagen flat-four engine.
The production 356 then went on to become a commercial success. In
1949, after the production of 50 356s in Gmund, Porsche returned to
its traditional home base of Stuttgart, Germany, and the 356
underwent another transformation, this time from an aluminum body
to steel. With deals in place with various European distributors
and American import maven Max Hoffman, the Porsche enterprise then
began to crank out 356s in a fairly conventional way, although
sales volume was always low by mass-market standards.
Though the 356 had become a sales success, Porsche engineers
realized that the model had a number of shortcomings when it came
to international racing. The steel body, while excellent for a
production car, was just too heavy, and its monocoque structure was
too flexible for optimum handling. So when Porsche contemplated a
new vehicle for full-on competition, the designers revisited the
first Porsche, the space-frame, mid-engined original prototype
356.
Work on the new racer commenced in late 1952, and by spring 1953
the mid-engined Type 550 was ready to go racing. It was a simple
design: ladder frame with six cross members made of welded tubes
topped with a hand-built aluminum body. The Volkswagen-based Super
1500 opposed four-cylinder engine was mounted inboard of the rear
axle, giving the design nearly 50/50 front/rear weight distribution
with a driver aboard.
Producing a scant 70 horsepower in street trim, the 1500 S engine
wasn't going to frighten the Jaguars or Ferraris, but out of the
box the Type 550-01 won its first race on the famed Nurburgring,
and then it, along with the second example, Type 550-02, scored a
one-two finish in its class in the 24 Hours of LeMans, the world's
most prestigious sports car race. Those same two cars went on to
triumph in the Carrera Panamericana, the fabled Mexican Road Race,
whose name continues to be emblazoned on Porsches today.
Set to capitalize on its racing successes, Porsche unveiled a
mid-engine, two-seat production car prototype called the Type 550
at the Paris motor show in October 1953. But it wasn't until late
in 1954 that the Porsche factory actually had a production 550
Spyder to sell. (The "Spyder" name is said to have been coined by
American Porsche importer Johnny Von Neuman.)
With initial success under their respective suspenders, Porsche
engineers set about making the 550 better, and a logical place to
look for improvement was in the engine compartment. The pushrod
1500S engine was just a tweaked VW powerplant, so Porsche
commissioned Ernst Fuhrman to draw up a more sophisticated engine
more befitting a LeMans winner. The result was the Type 547, an
incredibly complicated roller-bearing-equipped quad-cam that
initially produced 110 horsepower at a screaming 7800 rpm. The
substantial percentage increase in horsepower led to a similar
increase in performance, and the Fuhrman-designed engine, though
complex, proved very reliable even in long-distance events. Before
the 550 series was retired, the engine would be revamped to produce
135 horsepower at a slightly less frenetic 7200 rpm.
For 1956, Porsche decided to renew the 550 chassis, essentially
re-designing the car in the process. The lighter, stiffer space
frame resulted in a car that weighed just 1170 pounds, and it was
dubbed the 550A. The car immediately proved itself by winning a
1,000-kilometer endurance race at the 'Ring and finishing a
surprising first in the Targa Florio. By the time the 550A ceased
big-time racing after the 1958 season, it had not just established
its own legend, but it had also begun to create the mystique of the
Porsche brand.
Congratulations to willmere
for a FTF!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
jvagre sevraqyl naq zntargvp
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