File:Flickr - wbaiv - Red Porsche 906 ^48 from front.jpg

The 906 came out when I was about 10 and I fell in love with them. To quote Pete Lyons, are, "they practical, reliable, inexpensive? You just don't understand!" I believe this was the first time I had ever been near one, and there were several at the Renn Sport Reunion. All beautiful. All far-from-blank-sheet-of-paper designs.

The suspension pieces and 15" wheels, thus big front fenders, are there because there were 904 parts in the bins that had to be used. Porsche was never a charity. Ferdinand Pietch, a descendant of the senior Ferdinand Porsche, had completed his dipl. ing. and come to work for the family company. The racing department was where he started. The semi-productionized 904, with a stamped sheet-steel frame bonded to a fiberglass body made by Dornier, was not a sign post leading to the future. The 906 returned to Porsche's welded tubing space-frame strengths, but brought along the glass reinforced plastic body, hand made and ultra-light, racing car fashion. Dornier had used mechanical glass fibre choppers and basically sprayed fibers and resin onto an expensive mold- the way boats, a limited number of airplane parts and holiday trailers were made. Thickness, weight and strength varied wildly. The more Porsche-flavored hand laid fiberglass construction led to super lightweight panels, hoods, doors, etc, in the 1970s, with balsa wood reinforcement stiffening the resin and glass. In the real world, resin and fiberglass are used to reinforce balsa model airplane structures or to form structural items around shaped styrofoam... At Porsche, the fiberglass and resin were so thin they added balsa wood to strengthen *them!*