In the late 1950s, Porsche?s rear-engined 356 line was edging up on a decade in production, and the company had its eye on a successor to its venerable and beloved runabout. They didn?t want to go too large, as that was Mercedes-Benz territory; nor did they concern themselves with heading downmarket to compete with Opel or Volkswagen. The ultimate result of this soul searching is available today at your local Porsche dealer as something badged as a 911. It features a couple of vestigial back seats. Behind them resides a horizontally opposed six-cylinder engine. The basic silhouette of the car has remained the same since the 901 (quickly renamed to mollify an indignant Peugeot) appeared at the 1963 Frankfurt auto show.

Think of the T7 concept as the Cro-Magnon Porsche, a lineal break from the Neanderthal 356; it was a machine that largely presaged the company?s next 15 years of automobiles and continues to influence them in the present day. The T7 certainly resembled the 901 more than it did the 356. In fact, viewed head on, the concept could easily be mistaken for its production successor. Have a gander at the profile, however, and the differences are obvious. Rather than the harmonious, rounded fastback shape of the 901/911, the T7 looks as if a mid-Sixties anonymous German sedan had rear-ended a 901 and been assimilated, Borg style, into the automobile?s being. Not bad, considering that the full-scale mockup of the car was cobbled together in the waning days of 1959...