On 18 May 1982, antique dealer Helmut Pfeifhofer opened Europe’s first private Porsche car museum in Gmünd, Carinthia. It was not by chance that a man from Gmünd came up with the idea of building such a museum. The sleepy little town of Gmünd in Carinthia, the southernmost province of Austria, was the place where Porsche was able to survive the turmoil of war with its team and machinery after being relocated from Stuttgart in 1944. The very first car, bearing the name Porsche, saw daylight in the mill where Porsche has its offices back then.
Porsche 35 number 1 became street-legal on 8 June 1948 with the license plate K45-286. Manufactured by Ferry Porsche and chief designer Karl Rabe and his team in time-consuming hand work. Made from Volkswagen components, obviously.
Helmut Pfeifhofern founder of the Porsche Museum in Gmünd
“This was the time of the beginning of my Porsche – fanaticism. As a ten-year-old boy, I went to school with some of the sons of the designers, I was seized by the enthusiasm for Porsche and this enthusiasm continues to this day.” In 1965, the first Porsche 356, was bought by him and painstakingly restored. The pride of the collection, which had grown to 48 vehicles in the meantime, is a Porsche from the very first Gmünd series, hand-hammered aluminium body, chassis number 356 0020.
In 1976 Helmut Pfeifhofer bought the former court stables of the Counts of Lodron. The “Marhof” was renovated with enormous personal and financial commitment, and a fitting home was created for the Porsche Car Museum. An archive with a cinema and contemporary historical documentation is designed to get visitors in the right mood for viewing the vehicles. A separate Gmünd section, where the designs produced in Gmünd are exhibited, transports the visitor to the creative period of the Porsche family, during the Gmünd years from 1944 to 1950.
Since the 10th anniversary, there has been an agreement between the Porsche factory in Stuttgart and the “Porsche Automuseum Helmut Pfeifhofer” in Gmünd, a so-called MUSEUMSSTRAßE Stuttgart-Gmünd has been established. This means that there is always a new SPECIAL EXHIBITION in the Porsche Car Museum in Gmünd with interesting exhibits from the Porsche Factory Museum in Stuttgart. In 2001, his son Christoph took over this probably unique private collection and is expanding it with rare racing cars that he successfully uses in historic races.
Picture gallery Porsche Museum Gmünd
Pictures courtesy Porsche Museum Gmünd
