Can you imagine taking three weeks to build a 1500cc automobile engine and as much as 12-18 hours just to set the timing. That is the engine that Ernst Fuhrman — later to become the Porsche AG chairman — came up with when Porsche asked him to design a high-performance engine for the 550 race car.

It all started in the early 1950s when Porsche needed a more competitive production race car than the 356. The 356 proved be too heavy, and its monocoque body was too flexible to be competitive.

Porsche engineers returned to the early 1948 356 prototype, which used a space frame chassis with the engine placed behind the driver and in front of the transmission. It was a simple yet effective design.

The new race car, designated the 550, carried over the ladder-type frame construction from the 1948 356. It had a hand-formed aluminium body to cover everything. The motor to power the new design was a Volkswagen-based four-cylinder boxer engine producing 70 horsepower.

The 550 proved a success, winning its class in its first outing at the Nurburgring. Porsche then built a second car, and these two race cars scored a 1-2 class victory at Le Mans. The same two cars also went on to triumph in the Carrera Panamerica race.

In 1956, the Porsche engineers set about making the 550 even better. They developed a better chassis that was stiffer and lighter, but a more powerful engine was needed. Fuhrman was commissioned to do just that, and he produced what is known as the Type 547 engine.

In typical German fashion, the Type 547 engine was complicated. It was a DOHC, four-cylinder, air-cooled, dry-sump, twin-spark engine with a complex system of bevel gears and shafts to drive the valve train. Only a German engineer could have come up with this design.

As simple and elegant as the rest of the 550A was, the engine was on the opposite end of the spectrum. But it worked, and it won races. The engine produced 110 horsepower at 7,800 RPMs, and it proved to be very reliable. The 550A won the 1,000-kilometer endurance race at Nurburgring and also the Targa Florio.

Only 96 of the Type 547 engines were produced for the 550A. The updated 547-1 engines were also used in the 550 Spyder, the 356 Carrera GT and GS cars. When the engine was finally retired, it was producing 135 horsepower at a more sedate 7,200 RPMs.

Today, restored Porsche 550As are selling in excess of $3.5 million. The beauty of the 550 was that it could be driven to the track, raced, win and then driven home. I can only imagine how much fun it would be to drive one of these cars today.