GOLD DUST BARNFIND

Gold Dust Barnfind

Chris Runge's mission to reunite his 63 year old Porsche with its one and only previous owner.

“Before we went to visit the car, I couldn’t sleep for days. Still wondering if it was even real, my mind swept through the entire air-cooled spectrum. What if it’s just a Karmann Ghia, or what if it’s a 4 Cam?! Finally, the time came to see it. My son Fin walked up to the car and I knew he was excited. He always plays it cool, always has. As we walk around it, Fin excitedly whispers ‘dad, is this a good one?’ I took a deep breath and said ‘buddy… this is a good one.’”

We’ve featured Christopher Runge on Type 7 before. In the custom car space, Chris is a unique talent. Starting a little over a decade ago with virtually no formal training, he learned by trial and error to shape full sized cars from raw sheet metal, producing a series of genuinely distinct one off designs from his workshop in Minnesota. Many of these pull their running gear and components from early air cooled Porsches and as a result, he tends to attract a lot of notice from that crowd.

On the 8th of August 2023, he got an email from ‘Lori’, a woman who was put in contact by a local Porsche representative who thought Chris might be interested in helping her sell an old car that wasn’t seeing much use anymore. Just a few details in, it became clear that there was more here than met the eye.

“I was actually driving down the interstate when that email came in. I had to pull over to read it but I thought for certain it had to be a scam. There was a number at the bottom, so I called immediately. Lori answered and began to share the story with me. The car belonged to her father’s girlfriend Karen, who was now 88. She explained that Karen had bought the car at the factory in Germany when it was brand new, and it had been her baby ever since.

Lori had been shuffling the car around their garage for the last 20 years but by this point she’d been pushing Karen to sell the car. I’ve learned in life that there are some things you can’t afford, and others that you can’t afford to pass up. After a mental accounting of every cent I had, I set off for her cottage with a check in hand and a trailer on the truck.

The car was located just 25 miles away, in a beautiful town where my wife and I used to date in our 911. I even proposed to her just a few hundred yards away. I was fighting the overwhelming desire to call it fate, but how could I deny it? A find like this in rural Minnesota is rare, let alone anywhere else in the world these days. The garage door opened and stuffed into the corner was a very dusty slate grey 356b Cabriolet with a colour matched hardtop.”

As it turns out, Chris’ rogue email wasn’t an elaborate phishing scam. Lori was indeed selling an unrestored 1961 356, bought new in Germany and still in the loving hands of its first owner Karen. You’d be hard pressed to count on two hands the number of cars on earth that can claim the same.

“I had to remind myself to keep it together”, he says. “Thankfully my son Fin was laying on the ground making notes on every detail possible. The motor itself was stuck, but Fin has rebuilt 3 of these in the last year so that wasn’t a huge deal. I share my thoughts on pricing with Lori, who tells me that someone out of state is handling the negotiations but she’d relay my offer. The roller coaster ride was just beginning.

I get a call from a gentleman in Texas named Bob, who explains that I’m competing with someone on the west coast who deals with hundreds of cars a month. My heart sank; I knew it would be thrown on the internet and resold immediately to the highest bidder, all of its history overlooked and gone. I couldn’t imagine the thought of it. Bob told me he’d call back, but never does.

"A find like this in rural Minnesota is rare, let alone anywhere else in the world these days."

Finally, I call Bob myself. He casually tells me the car is sold, and I’m shocked. ‘Bob, I thought you were going to call me to let me know how things were?’ He says ‘Well, uh, the car is sold’. The title was sent, though funds hadn’t been transferred. I called Lori, pleading to her the case for why the car had to stay in Minnesota, which she says she’ll consider. A week without sleep goes by, I stare at my clock at 3:56AM every night laughing as I wonder if it’s all for nothing. Finally, I get a call. ‘Chris, you’re the new owner of a 356!’

"We ordered the car up north but we drove to Stuttgart to pick it up. When we got there, Ferry Porsche’s car was in the lot with steel bars around it so no one could park by it. We got a tour of the factory that day, it was really something."

We trailered the car back to the workshop and carefully unloaded it, Fin pushing as I steered. It’s surreal. We each grab a soda and pull up chairs in the driveway across from the car, talking for a good hour. We go over thoughts and ideas, I can see he’s just as excited as I am. Fin digs into the car, searching every cavity for relics. He uncovers an old German pencil and a period first aid kit, even the sleeve for the original tire gauge. We’ve yet to actually speak to Karen at this point, we don’t even know if she’s real! We got it in the shop, and dove straight in. We pulled the engine, the brakes, the fuel system and so on.

It may sound fairly straightforward, but we crammed all the work into two months worth of after-hours and weekends. Fin made up new brake lines, we sourced new shocks, we rebuilt the clutch, the fuel system, cleaned out the tank and gave it correct Michelin tires. We also resealed the transaxle and gave it a temporary 1883 twin plug engine I had in the shop to give Fin the time to eventually rebuild the original.

Finally, it was time for a drive. It was late into the evening, but we couldn’t resist. The car was beyond what we imagined. Smooth as silk, great steering and perfect power from the little twin plug. We were so enamoured. Lori was also amazing throughout this process, any questions we had she did her best to answer. Fin and I had great conversations around the idea of stewardship and being custodians for this car. It was Karen’s story and we had to get her Porsche back on the road and let her experience it again. The last time she had was 20 years ago. Over the next few weeks we slowly put more shakedown miles on the car, and we thoroughly cleaned it. Finally, Lori offered to coordinate a meeting with Karen, it was time to reunite her with the 356.

We met her near her home on a cool fall day. She eagerly waited for me to open the trailer as she talked about the 356 within. What she didn’t know was that we’d actually unloaded the car a block away, and my son Fin was about to come down the driveway in it to surprise her. As he arrives she exclaims ‘my baby!’ the look on her face was priceless.”

Now 88 years old, Karen has owned her 1961 356 Cabriolet since new, though she hadn’t been in it for around 20 years. True to his word, Chris was bringing it back to her after a two month effort to get it roadworthy again, eager to hear what she had to say about her life with the car. What follows is a recounting of the conversation the two had that day.

Chris begins: “So what made you order a Porsche?”

“I’m not sure why, I just loved it. My husband wanted a Sunbeam but I said no, the Sunbeam looked like a grasshopper! The 356 was just special. We decided on the 1600, we didn’t need more engine than that. We ordered the car up north but we drove to Stuttgart to pick it up. When we got there, Ferry Porsche’s car was in the lot with steel bars around it so no one could park by it. I remember it was a sort of caramel colour with corduroy seat centres. We got a tour of the factory that day, it was really something.”

“So did you bring it home that day?”

“Oh yes, we drove it home to Bremerhaven, it was a lot more car than our little bug.”

“Your husband was stationed in the military there right? Where did you drive it?”

“We drove through Austria, Netherlands, France, Italy… It’s been to a lot of places. We never had any issues in it, I remember losing a hubcap in the alps, I watched it fly by my side after hitting a pot hole. My husband wanted we drive on but I insisted that we go back, I walked up and down the ditch and after a bit of time there it was!”

“Does the car have a name?”

“You know, I name everything, but I never did name the Porsche. My poodle rode everywhere in it and her name was Diva, for Farahdiva the princess to the Shah of Iran. You can still see Diva’s scratch marks on the dash!”

As they entered the car, Chris and Karen continued their conversation. They strike up the engine and begin their test drive, with Chris at the wheel. It’s here that Karen reveals the big twist. As it turns out, in all the decades she’s had it, she never once actually drove it, preferring instead to experience it from the passenger seat for all of its 75,000 miles.

“How are you feeling now, are you doing ok?” Asks Chris.

“Oh yes, you’re going to have to fight to pull me out of here!”

“So you never had a driver’s licence?”

“No, but I had a permit. I scored great marks on my written exam but I never did get my licence. We had the car in Europe for around 3 years, I remember Kennedy was shot soon before we were due to leave. We loaded the car on the SS Buckner in Bremerhaven. It was late in the winter and it was supposed to take 5 days to get home. The seas were so rough it ended up taking 8. The swells were 40 feet high, I was so worried the Porsche would be damaged down below.

When we landed, we drove it straight to Wisconsin to see friends, then Minnesota to see family. We were relocated a few times and it went everywhere. First Missouri, then Montana where my husband’s family was and finally San Francisco, where it took part in a lot of events. When we first brought it back, nobody knew what it was, these were so new back then. It was special, in Germany if you saw another Porsche, you’d always honk the horn and wave, sometimes you’d flash your lights.”

Following the emotional reunion, Chris had a few thoughts to share on the experience.

“After spending time with Karen in the car I realised the deep romantic connection people had with cars back then. It was as though she had several choices on how she could experience Europe in her early 20s, the car was almost the filter through which she experienced the world. I get it now. Being in this car, the smell, the sound, the feel. It’s love, it’s excitement, it’s anticipation for the next adventure. Like my wife and I dating in our old 911, I get it.”