This is the World’s Oldest Porsche: The 1898 Egger-Lohner Electric Vehicle

At the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed age of 22, Ferdinand Porsche designed the 1898 Egger-Lohner electric vehicle, C.2 Phaeton. If you’re out of breath reading that name, the car is also known as the “P1”, for it is the first car Porsche ever designed. The young Porsche even engraved “P1” on all the car’s major components.

The early EV was powered by a rear-mounted three-horsepower motor that weighed 287 pounds. If placed in overdrive mode, it would produce five horsepower for brief periods. When turned full-blast, the P1’s top speed was 21 mph.

The P1 used a rather large 1,100-pound battery pack, which meant a range of up to 49 miles. Its total weight came in at 2,977 pounds, which is about how much we wish the current 911 would weigh.

As you would expect of any Porsche design, the P1 was a winning racer. In September of 1899 it competed in an electric vehicle race where contestants had to cover 24 miles. The P1 won the Berlin competition 18 minutes ahead of its closest competitor. Fewer than half of the racers crossed the finish line, and to top it off, the P1 was the most efficient of them all.

Between 1902 and 2013, the first Porsche-designed car sat undisturbed in a private barn in Austria. Porsche unveiled the all-original and unrestored P1 on Monday as a new addition to its permanent display at the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.

Sources [USA Today, Automobile Magazine]