The Porsche 911 has been the world’s best-selling sports car for decades but did you know it was not supposed to be called the 911. The iconic Porsche 911 was supposed to be named as the Porsche 901.
In 1963, Porsche introduced its successor to the Porsche 356 as the 901 at the Frankfurt Motor Show. It was then presented in October at the 1964 Paris Auto Salon. This is where the French carmaker Peugeot objected to Porsche for using any three-digit number for their cars where the middle number had a 0.
Peugeot was already selling vehicles with this naming scheme in key markets and claimed to have the rights for the same and urged Porsche to not use the 901 branding.
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Meanwhile, Porsche designers had decided to put the 901 badge in gold on the dashboard and the rear of the car and had already produced the same before Peugeot had objected to its use. Now Porsche had the 9 and the 1 but could not use the 0 so they just replaced the number 0 with a 1 and hence was born the iconic brand Porsche 911.
By the way, if they wanted to make use of all those gold letters why didn’t they just call it the Porsche 910 or even the 091? What ever the case may be no one can deny that the Porsche 911 has been an icon and enjoys a huge fan following all across the world for its superb performance and driving dynamics.
