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1949 Gm?nd Porsche shows the birth of an icon

The Austrian village of Gmünd is more than just difficult to pronounce; it's also the birthplace of the Porsche brand. Before the company ever started building sports cars at its current home base near Stuttgart, the fledgling business completed several vehicles in the tiny town in Southern Austria. In this video, former Pikes Peak International Hill Climb champion Jeff Zwart takes a look at a 1949 Gmünd coupe to see how the company has evolved since its earliest days.
The thing to note about the Gmünd-built Porsches is their absolute design simplicity. The phrase "form follows function" gets bandied around a lot, but it really means something when you look at these early cars. However, the minimalism was partially out of necessity. The vehicles were meant to be sporty but certainly weren't rockets. Power came courtesy of a modified Volkswagen Beetle engine, and anything extraneous would have slowed the models down. Scroll down to watch Zwart go back in time to Porsche's beginnings.

Porsche resurrects V8-powered 911 prototype from the Eighties

These days, we take it for granted that the Porsche 911 uses a flat-six engine. That's because every version of the iconic rear-engined sports car has had one. Right? Well, for the most part. There was the 912 that joined the original in the late Sixties with a flat-four. And in the mid-Eighties, Porsche toyed around with the idea of a V8-powered 911.
After the first-generation 911 had been in production for over two decades, Porsche began development of its successor, the 964, in the 1980s. And one of its ideas was to use a V8 engine. So it took a 964, borrowed a V8 from Audi, gave it the rear bodywork from a 959 and dubbed it the 965.
The idea was to create a more affordable successor to the 959 that included its advanced all-wheel drive system and active suspension. The Audi V8 would have been replaced with one of Porsche's own design - possibly based on the it had built for Indy racing - but Dr. Ulrich Bez (who was then head of Porsche R&D long before taking the reins at Aston Martin) ultimately killed the project.

New Porsche 4-cyl engines to range from 1.6L to 2.5L

Recent rumors of a turbocharged, flat-four-engine from Porsche for the Boxster (pictured testing above), Cayman and maybe other models go back over a year. The latest scuttlebutt indicates that there could be three variants on the horizon with 1.6-, 2.0- and 2.5-liter displacements and power as high as 360 horsepower.
Car magazine in the UK claims to have access to the specifications for the project and thinks the 2.0- and 2.5-liter versions are guaranteed for production for the Boxster and Cayman. However, it believes a question mark still looms over the 210-hp 1.6L because the engine would go into a new, smaller sports car that still doesn't have a green light for production.
Regardless of displacement, the new fours would be turbocharged and direct-injected. The 2.0-liter would produce around 286 hp and 295 pound-feet of torque, and the 2.5-liter would make about 360 hp and 347 lb-ft. Earlier reports pegged some parts sharing with the current flat-six.