The Porsche 356 SL took the manufacturer’s first class win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1951. 75 years later, as Porsche marks an important anniversary, the car returned to that fateful site.
Cameron Healy loved the Porsche 356 SL from the moment he saw it at the prestigious Monterey Historic Races in 1993. But back then, it looked a bit different.
Painted red and with no roof, the car he stumbled across was presented as a 1949 Gmünd, and Healy was “just drawn to it and fascinated by it.”
Over the years, he admired the car from afar, and even had good friend Rod Emory’s father build him something which looked similar. In 2009, he approached the car’s owner, Chuck Forge, but was reluctant to ask about purchasing the vehicle.
Sadly, three weeks later, Forge passed away, and his estate went to auction. From there, Healy and Emory were able to acquire the car in March 2010 and set about restoring it.
Healy’s background is as an entrepreneur and Porsche collector, while Emory is a passionate restorer and customiser of vintage Porsche cars.
It was during that time that the first information came to light which suggested its true origins, as the first Porsche to take a class win in the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Solving the puzzle: Identifying the car
While there were plenty of clues to the car’s unique heritage, the key to identifying the real Le Mans class-winning car came down to a tiny detail: The serial numbers etched on the bodywork.
There had been four cars prepared for the 1951 24 Hours of Le Mans: 054 and 055 were prepared by coachbuilder Dannenhauer, in Stuttgart, and 056 and 063 were prepared by Reutter.
Physical differences, such as the unique door handle pockets, narrowed down the chassis to one of the two Reutter cars, before removing its paint revealed its true story.
Their chassis in fact had both serial numbers, where one of the cars had crashed before the race, and the number restamped. This was a common practice at that time for race cars, ensuring one car was always race-ready, even if there was an incident with the other.
Emory said the breakthrough was “a moment that changed everything,” and confirmed that their car was the Le Mans winner, bearing the number 356/2-063.
Emory said: “We’d been spending all this time digging through, trying to figure things out, and there was a moment that I was cleaning the chassis number, and as I was cleaning it, you could see the five six behind it. So it was like, wow.
"I called Cameron, because it was myself and the guy that was preparing the engine. He was there as I was cleaning it. I called Cameron, and I said, "You won't believe this, I said, but this car is actually got a different chassis number”.”
He added: “It was really one of those pieces in the timeline of what we were going through that helped bring things together, because there were so many little physical characteristics about the car that were different.
“There were things that Cameron and I were looking at to try to come up with enough evidence and data, so that we could determine if this was the car.
“We knew that this was for sure one of the Reutter cars before we even got the chassis number cleaned. Then this, as I cleaned it, now we know that it's actually both of the Reutter cars.
Having gathered evidence that their car was the original Le Mans winner, the pair moved the vehicle to a facility in California in 2011 to begin the restoration process.
They compiled extensive scans of the car, and machined a full-scale foam model to envisage what it would look like once the long-since removed roof was replaced.
But before they started the long journey of restoration, they wanted to confirm with Porsche that the car was the real deal.
The team identified 14 characteristics which supported their case, and after three-and-a-half years of work, they presented their work to Porsche.
Bringing the original Porsche 356 SL back to life
By March 2015, Healy and Emory had prepared huge binders of material, and passed them to director and racer Jeff Zwart to give to Porsche.
A month later, they had their answer - It was the right car. Healy said it was “a huge moment for us.” But then came the next challenge: Porsche wanted to display it at that year’s Rennsport Reunion, just five months away.
Emory set to work, reinstating the roof, engine and gearbox to get the car ready for North America’s biggest Porsche event. The team made the choice to present it with the numbers ghosted on the car in bare metal.
The moment the iconic car was rolled out to lead the event’s landmark photograph was “a very emotional moment.”
Emory said: "We were the last car to be lined up for the photograph. They told us to wait in the paddock and then we pushed the car all the way through three turns, uphill and downhill, no brakes.
“When we came around the corner, here was this whole group of Porsche waiting for the kind of the queen.”
Their next step was presenting the car at the 2016 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance - but first they had to finish the restoration.
Details such as the upholstery were completed with the help of the Porsche Museum, who let Emory borrow the original book of Reutter samples used in the original car. To find the right paint colour, the pair scanned an original panel owned by a Belgian collector and created the perfect Le Mans Silver.
Painstaking work meant that every small thing is just as it should have been - file marks, imperfections and all.
Heading home: The car returns to Le Mans
Returning the car to its spiritual home at the Circuit de la Sarthe was the final piece of the puzzle.
In 2023, after 72 years, the Porsche 356 SL headed home. Following the very same route that the car would have taken on its original journey to Le Mans, Healy set off from Stuttgart towards La Sarthe to mark 75 years of Porsche Sports Cars and 100 years of Le Mans.
This year, to celebrate 75 Years of Porsche Motorsport, the car came home once more, and took pride of place at the heart of the Porsche Experience Centre.
Speaking at the event, Emory said: “For me, I think coming here and seeing how much everybody loves and appreciates the car, and how much Porsche and everybody is celebrating the car, for me, is that sense of calm. This is it, the car is finally getting the recognition that it really deserves, 75 years later.”
“To me, it's what needed to happen, because this is, in my opinion, one of the five most significant Porsche of all time.”
Healy added: “We knew the gravity of what we were dealing with, and what if we proved it. It was a big deal to the Porsche brand, and these all were steps.
“The 2015 Rennsport Reunion was a major step, but bringing it back here in 2023 to Europe, where the car hadn’t been seen in 72 years, was a big deal, and it really set the stage for this event, because it opened a lot of people's eyes.
“We had a nice working relationship with Porsche on that, and so when they wanted to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Porsche Motorsport, they said we know the car’s in the US, but we really want to have it, we need to have it, we said no problem.”
And so the original Le Mans class winner sits in pride of place at the heart of the celebrations - restored to exactly how she looked on that fateful day in 1951 which kickstarted 75 years of history.
Cameron Healy and Rod Emory documented the project in a book, 46: The Birth of Porsche Motorsport. You can
