![]() But then he heard that I restore old models and offered it to me instead.” Donated decades before by Porsche, the aggregate turns out not to be an original engine, but to be engine number 22 – and thus he now has a very early six-cylinder at his disposal.Īnd slowly, after much research, the history of Alois Ruf’s 901 comes into focus. He told me he was scrapping an old Porsche six-cylinder engine used as a visual aid at the school. “I received a call from the caretaker of a vocational college. And once again, fate steps in and offers a helping hand. With the car otherwise completed, now begins the search for an engine from the early testing phase. “So they replaced the original six-cylinder testing engine with that.” Fate steps in and offers a helping hand “It’s just a shame that when the vehicle was released from testing and then sold, Porsche already had a series engine,” says Ruf. It’s quite a sensation, as number 6 was thought to be lost without trace. The first five and seventh 901 built had only two round instruments. It quickly becomes clear that the chassis number belongs to the first 901 with five round instruments on the dashboard. For example, the rear window does not open. My father thought that was more than enough power for me.”Ī family matter: Alois Ruf’s daughter is also a huge fan of Porsche – and her father’s 901 with its many unique details. “But because the previous owner had held on to the six-cylinder engine, we installed the four-cylinder of a 912 instead. “So I’d have something to work on and drive once I had my driver’s license,” says Alois Ruf. In 1969, on the occasion of his 19th birthday, Alois Ruf Senior gives his son a used Porsche with minor damage from an accident. Due to possible legal issues, however, the type is renamed – instead of 901, from that point onward it is named 911. But then in fall 1963, Porsche introduces an exciting, new model that appears more and more frequently at the workshop in the years following the first encounter with the blue sports car: the 901, from spring 1964 in series production and in fall of the same year sold for the first time. Quite a few 356 models ultimately pass through Ruf Senior’s workshop. The youth’s passion for the Zuffenhausen models is ignited when his father, a qualified mechanic with his own repair shop, brings home the first Porsche 356. ![]() Crazy!” The Ruf family is fascinated by the Porsche brandĮven before this moment on the A 8, the Ruf family as a whole is fascinated by the Porsche brand. “Now I know it was the first Porsche of that kind I had ever seen. Though mere fractions of a second, they mark the beginning of a deep passion that exists to this day. “We were impressed,” says Alois Ruf, director of the Porsche service center in Pfaffenhausen, recalling the encounter on the autobahn. ![]() Nearly 55 years later, he still owns the car that goes by the nickname Quick Blue.Īlois, a car enthusiast and subscriber to the hobby technology magazine, knows at once that it must have been the new Porsche 2000 – that’s what the magazine called the prototype from Zuffenhausen. His first Porsche: Alois Ruf is given the sixth 901 ever built for his 19th birthday, without knowing anything about its eventful history.
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