I've been following both Adam Wright of Porsche Unobtanium in Ravena, NY, and Wray Schelin, metal-banger to the stars from Charleton, MA, for a long time, now, and knew that Adam was trying to re-create a 550 Spyder in aluminum. It's getting closer, and Wray just posted an update on his Facebook page:
The saga of Adam Wright's 550 Porsche Project:
I met Adam around 2013 when I had my shop in Stafford Springs, CT.
He had bought a 550 Porsche fiberglass body and he brought it to me to make an aluminum body off of it.
We started making flexible shape pattern and profile gauges off of it and we found it was asymmetrical. We made some panels from it but it also suffered from the fact that the fiberglass body was cast off of two cars, and the front and rear section had never been connected. All of the inner structure panels were not there and the dash did not look right.
When I moved to my current shop in Charlton, MA in 2015 we made the decision to make a wireform using one side of the fiberglass body as the surface information. That solved one problem but we were still missing all of the inner structure panels and we needed a frame.
Adam bought a Beck frame and had another shop outfit it with an engine, transaxle, and Adam grafted a 356 front suspension and nose section to it.
That is how the project progressed and finally came to my Charlton shop as a roller.
In the meantime Adam purchased two original 550 doors, a front hood, rear inner fenders, and a rear body shroud. The rear body shroud was missing or had damaged sections which I patched in.
Adam knew we needed all of the inner panels that we were missing and he was able to source them from Bruce Kimmons in AZ. Bruce had worked on several original 550 and had made a lot of bucks and tooling to make complete bodies. He had some of the panels Adam needed plus Adam commissioned Bruce to make the others that were needed. These panels are close to impossible to make with out having originals or tooling to make them.
So now we had a pile of aluminum sheetmetal panels and a chassis. Adam comes to my shop for a few days at a time helping to put the puzzle together. Tonight we finally got to see how all of these parts fitted together. Some of the panels were made by my students eight or nine years ago off of the fiberglass body, some were made from my wireform, some were original panels, some were made by Bruce Kimmons.
With just a little tapping, pushing, and pulling, the original doors fit up amazingly well. The original hood needed a few taps and weld and it fits almost perfect, with a few tweaks still needed. Adam will end up with a very cool 550, it is getting closer.
Unobtanium's web site: https://unobtanium-inc.com/
Wray Schelin's web site: https://www.proshaper.com/
