Content by Brett Johnson, from The Porsche 356, A Restorer’s Guide to Authenticity IV, used with permission. More about Brett here.
The vehicles described below are those models that were standard production cars. These were steel-bodied vehicles with an integral steel chassis. They were produced from model year 1950 through 1965 (ten cabriolets were built in 1966). Special production models and aluminum-bodied vehicles are not described.
Take the journey through time of the 356 models. Navigation hints: Below the color photos are links to modern photos of variations of the 356 model through the years. Above each photo is a link to a website page devoted to that model group which include original Factory Photos and other fun historical information. In the captions for the photos, the italic text is the original caption, and regular text are Brett's comments. Each webpage displays the photos with captions so scroll down to see all. To get a closer look, the same images in the photo album can be viewed in higher resolution and full page view using the controls on the side panel.
Below is a Flow Chart of the 356 models through the history of production at Porsche.