Eye Candy!

I found a picture of the 2-gauge dash for that '54-55 Speedster at the top.  They changed to the three-gauge cluster sometime in late 1956 IIRC, about the same time they switched the tail-lights from bee-hives to teardrops:

And how about a new, crank-fired, 4-cam engine?  With the updated ignition system, they run MUCH smoother than original (which had a lot of trouble keeping the two, cam-driven distributors sync'd because of gear lash) - it was almost impossible, so everyone just rev'd the heck out of them to overcome the lousy ignition.  The crank-fire pulsing replaces all that, gives you programmable spark timing to each coil/distributor AND eliminates rebuilding the distributors at the Porsche recommended 5,000 mile interval. (yes, you read that right).  The crank-fire stuff is hidden and Meister builds, from scratch, exact, non-pulsing copies of the original distributors which they mount to the engine to direct the spark to the appropriate plug.  An amazing piece of work. 

Wow - love the liquid metal look of the first silver speedster.  See the tree are changing up north. 

Yup, it was a gorgeous ride through Foliage Country, just about at it's peak.

All of the silver cars there had paint that looked as if it had just been poured on - pure liquid silver.  And that wasn't a "staged shot", either - right from my iPhone.

I'm working on about 50 photos for the club website (I'm the photo web-meister) so I'll let everyone know once they're posted and you can ogle.

Gotta run - I'm working at replacing the head gaskets on my late brother's Scirroco Callaway and have to make a parts run.

gn

Thanks for that Gordon! You made my morning.

+1

Love that Oslo Blue.  I think I may have found my next car's color - assuming I ever get one.

I struggled with the blues for my VS before finally settling on Azure Blue.  I'm happy with it.  Just a little darker than Oslo.

Great pics! Thanks for sharing! 

I'm a fickle sucker.  I think I like the Azure Blue even better.

Crank-fired re-pop 4-cam engines. Panel-beat aluminum replica spyder bodies.

Amazing. 

Stan:  

You know......this club has been to several places like this, all around the Boston area, and the work being done is absolutely amazing.  It's good to see that the few remaining "Old School Craftsmen" are keeping this going and have enough work to remain in business.  Having said that, there seem to be some amazingly deep pockets around, funding all of this work.  

Still, what we all know is that about 8-10 years ago the price of 356's, especially speedsters but now coupes as well, started to take off, so if you find an old Speedster for, say, $40K and put another, say, $100K into it (not that hard to do, really), you end up with a car that you can turn around and sell for over $200K about now and is appreciating quarterly and THAT is why so many are being hauled out of barns these days.

What this shop is doing with the 550 spyder is taking apart a real one that they acquired (as an investment, but also to serve as their model) and copying every, single part, including the engine.  Even something as mundane as the brake back plates (which, like everything else on the 550, were Porsche-based but then modified for the 550) are being tooled up and re-made in small lots.  

They have three, very talented young men who are dedicated to this project and are gearing up to make more than one, but at the price they will probably get for a copy I doubt that there will be lots of them.

Still, you walk away from the place in awe of their abilities and talents.

But then you think, "Do these cars get driven as they should?  In some instances, yes.....I went to a club board meeting last night and three members weren't there because they're driving their cars (2 coupes and a Cabriolet) to the PCA West Coast Holiday, being held way out West in Santa Fe, New Mexico, so at least SOME of them get driven....a lot!  These are the same three guys I wrote about a while back, driving to the holiday in SoCal.