Two new Porsche 356 Art Cars emerge in readiness for festival season

Alfredo Häberli, an acclaimed Swiss industrial designer, has collaborated with Porsche Centre Zurich to create a new 356 art car. The handpainted 1964 SC was recently unveiled at a celebratory event at the Schlieren, and will be auctioned off in December, with proceeds being donated to charity.

The aim of the project is to draw attention to Switzerland’s thriving arts scene and wider Swiss culture, including the tradition of designing and crafting car bodies. “We are delighted to present this extraordinary 356,” says Sascha Leardi, Managing Director of Porsche Centre Zurich. “Alfredo Häberli’s art opens up many new lines of sight to design, performance and tradition. He painted this SC together with his assistant, Dominic Plüer. Roughly one kilogram of paint in three different shades was applied to around eighty percent of the Porsche’s body.” Unusually for an art car, Häberli selected neutral colours, so much so the exterior looks a solid shade of Light Ivory at first glance. “I did so in order to bring out this iconic Porsche’s language of form,” he tells us. “The colour and structure of the brushstrokes highlight the 356’s lines in a classical, timeless, and poetic manner, but in a different way to a typical automotive paint job — in fact, it is more like a sculpture.”

THE PROCEEDS WILL BE DONATED TO A RESPECTED SWISS ASSOCIATION SUPPORTING CHILDREN WITH CANCER

Häberli was born in Argentina in 1964. He moved to Switzerland in 1977 and earned a degree in industrial design at the Höhere Schule für Gestaltung in Zurich. Today, he is an internationally established designer with his own studio in the Seefeld quarter of Zurich. He is known for streamlined and inventive contemporary work avoiding trends and pursues two main topics in his philosophy of design, namely precision and poetry. He has always been fascinated by the concept of lightness. “Eliciting much with few means achieving great things with little material. Needless to say, using a 356 for the starting point of my art car project made perfect sense.”

The result of his efforts is entitled Das Gewicht der Leichtigkeit (The Weight of Lightness). Following its unveiling in Schlieren, the unique Porsche will go on tour and be shown at various locations and events in and around Switzerland. The car will then be sold in cooperation with Zurich’s Koller auction house. The proceeds will be donated to Kinderkrebshilfe Schweiz, a respected Swiss association supporting children suffering with cancer.

Another one-of-kind 356 was recently revealed as part of Porsche’s ongoing collaboration with New York fashion label, Aimé Leon Dore (ALD). Based on a 1960 356 B, now fully restored and painted Midnight Blue, the car’s simpler-than-standard look is achieved through removal of exterior furniture, including the bumpers. In the cabin resides a 356 Carrera 2 steering wheel, as well as seats trimmed in a coloured leather matching the blue of the body paint. Tone-on-tone stitching and tartan for the seat centre panels provide a pleasing feast for the eyes. Gold leaf details feature throughout.

In 2020, Porsche and ALD restored and customised a 911 964 Carrera 4, which was presented at the Jeffery Deitch Gallery during New York Fashion Week. In 2021, ALD founder and creative director, Teddy Santis, presented a Safari-inspired modified 911 SC restored in a shade of OEM Olive, a reference to the heritage of his Greek family.