Ferry’s sister Louise

She arrived in New Zealand in August 1965, and over the next four decades passed through seven pairs of hands before Steven and Michelle Neville found her, with 81,000 miles on her odometer and in need of everything. What came next would consume the better part of 20 years. It would also draw on some of the finest vehicle restoration talent in the Southern Hemisphere and produce one of the most precisely realised early Porsche cars to have graced any concours anywhere in the world.

The brief to achieve that was simple: The car must present exactly as it left the factory, if not better. 

The name

With another Porsche 356 B right-hand drive cabriolet – known as “Ferry”, after Ferry Porsche himself – already in the Neville stable, the choice of name for their next car was straightforward. Louise was Ferry Porsche’s sister. She was imported new to Australia in 1954, one of eight cars in that consignment, the only cabriolet among them, before later crossing the Tasman and spending decades in successive Auckland garages.

Steven and Michelle acquired her in January 2006 with a single ambition: to win the Masters Class at the Ellerslie Classic Car Show’s Intermarque Concours d’Élégance, New Zealand’s only fully recognised and professionally judged concours competition.

The restoration

Not a single component was left untouched. Body, engine, gearbox, suspension, soft-top and wooden framework; and everything was sourced, verified and, where necessary, fabricated to the standards that concours judging demands. 

Reutters in Germany were consulted to validate correct colours and materials for this 356 Cabriolet (chassis 60604), with sample sets sent to New Zealand for reference.

“Not a single component was left untouched.”

Period-correct stickers for shock absorbers and batteries were sourced or made to exact factory specifications. Tool kits were corrected to original configurations. Remarkably, a period Australian magazine featuring Louise herself on the cover was obtained, offering an extraordinary reference that guided many of the critical decisions during the restoration.

Steven passed away in November 2020, before the restoration reached completion. The responsibility of carrying his dream to its conclusion fell to Michelle, and she did.

Ellerslie

The Ellerslie Classic Car Show has been held at Ellerslie Racecourse since 1981, when the Porsche Club of New Zealand was instrumental in relocating the event from the Cornwall Park sunken gardens. In the five decades since, the club has won the Teams event more than any other marque. This year, both club cars were entered individually in separate classes rather than as a team, the preparation effort unchanged but each car standing entirely on its own merits. Louise was entered in the Masters Class, the competition’s most demanding category. Damien Shalfoon’s 356 Outlaw competed in the Modified Class, earning a well-deserved second place.

The measure applied to concours preparation is, quite literally, the white glove test. A judge must be able to pass white cotton gloves across any surface of a competing car – underneath the body, through the engine bay, along the suspension, inside the exhaust pipes – and those gloves must remain white. Every screw head must be aligned and the radio, it is said, even tuned to Stuttgart.

The result

Louise won the Masters Class. She was also awarded Best Car in Show. Her score of 585 points from a possible 590 made her the third-highest-scoring car in over 50 years of Ellerslie competition, across all classes and all marques. Michelle drove her to the venue, supported the team through nine days of preparation, and received the result with entirely deserved ecstasy. Steven’s dream, formed all those years ago, had been realised.

Louise was named for Louise Piëch, Ferry Porsche’s sister, without whom the early intertwining of Porsche and Volkswagen may never have unfolded as it did. From Stuttgart in 1954 to a concours lawn in Auckland 70 years later, the rest, as they say, is history.