Porsche 356 and my Family’s Mythology

As far back as I can remember I have loved cars. Growing up in Leyburn I never saw any exotic cars, but once a month my mum would buy me a copy of Modern Motor from the local corner store and I would read it from cover to cover and dream of owning my own sports car someday. My mum picked up on my love of cars and would tell me stories of old boyfriends who had cool cars when she was growing up in Toowoomba. One such story that stood out for me was about an old boyfriend called Ron, with a rich father who bought him a red sports car that was fast and ultra-cool. Mum used to tell me that she thought it was a Porsche convertible and that one night Ron convinced her to drive it around Prince Henry Drive. She would have been 17 or 18 at the time and evidently knew how to drive, even though my grandfather would not let her get her drivers licence. Mum only got her licence after she was married when she was 22 years old. Fast forward many decades, my grandfather had passed away and because I had once worked as a photographer I inherited all of my grandfather’s photography equipment and slides. This collection also included thousands of slides chronicling our family from the 1940’s until the 1980’s. It was when I was going through all the photos and converting them to a digital format for the family, I came across a gem.

The photo you see was of a young guy, barefoot, white t-shirt, doing his best James Dean leaning up against a red 356 cabriolet. The car was parked outside what I remembered well as my great grandmother’s house in Caloundra. I could now see why mum had remembered such a beautiful car, and getting to drive it as a young unlicensed teenager, what could ever have gone wrong.

I showed the photo to mum and she remembered that Ron and her boyfriend at the time Col had driven down from Toowoomba to surprise her on a family holiday at the beach.

Then the question came into my head, where is this car now?

Ron passed away many years ago, but I am still in contact with his best mate Col who told me that Ron’s dad had purchased the car for Ron from a guy at the Gold Coast who had owned a hardware store in Miami. Ron kept the car for a couple of years before selling it to a public servant who worked for the Main Roads Department.

Armed with a photo and a Queensland number plate NHZ 310, I asked a few 356 owners I had met over the years and eventually I cornered Greg Riddell at Cars and Coffee and he said, “Oh that is Peter Harburg’s car”.

I was now able let my mum and Col know that the car was still in Queensland and well looked after. Recently I shared the photo with Peter and over a coffee he was able to fill in some of the gaps in the history of NHZ 310.

It was a prize in an Art Union, sold to the owner of hardware store on the Gold Coast, then owned by Ron Mooney in Toowoomba, where it became part of our family’s mythology. Peter purchased it in 1975 and put it through a restoration and today it is still part of his collection.

I love a good car story, I have recently been trying to fill in some of the gaps in the history of my 1967 Porsche 912 that start in a mansion in South Yarra almost end in tragedy in a Suncorp salvage yard and is currently in my custody. I realise that classic cars outlive people and I want to pass on as much history as I can to future custodians. But, that will be another story for a future magazine article. Stephen Foss