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The Founders' Region, Potomac - Porsche enthusiasts for more than 50 YearsOur formal name is The Founders' Region, Potomac. Yes, that's right. This is where the Porsche Club of America started. During the year 1954 a group of Porsche owners from the Washington metropolitan area got together to share not only the joys of driving a Porsche but also with the interest of helping each other out with the maintenance of these rather unique vehicles in the US at the time. After a couple of organizational meetings they voted on the procedures for admission and membership dues and in January 1955 the Porsche Club of America was incorporated.  This gives our region a rich vein of history, and some interesting archival material including the original PCA Charter. Here you will find a window into the more than 50 years since the PCA was founded. Our Region Historian, George Whitmore, is constantly on the lookout for stories, memorabilia, and photographs that document the more than 50 years of the Founder's Region. If you have hidden gems for George, please contact him at
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Here are some examples of the rich vein of history that George is mining. Driving your modern, perhaps water cooled and fuel injected Porsche to the dealer for service seems easy. Looking after an early model 911 or 944 calls for a little more involvement. Have you ever wondered what it was like owning an exotic German sports car back in the 1950's?
Robert Elliot's wonderful story takes us back in time to the world fo early Porsche ownership. Here are the leaders who guided the club from its inception through to today. It was their stewardship that grew the region from a handfull of enthusiasts in 1954 to a vibrant organization with an annual budget of more that $500,000 and over 3000 members and associate members today. The management and operation of the club is still entirely voluntary. The growth and the value of the club to our members is in the hands of the members themselves. We owe a great debt to those who volunteer their time and talent to make the club what it is today. These past Presidents were the leaders that inspired the many hundreds of dedicated volunteers that made it possible. ___________________________________________________________________________________ OWNING A PORSCHE FIFTY YEARS AGOby Robert D. ElliotThe following notes were put together in response to an inquiry from George Whitmore in his capacity as Historian of the Porsche Club. He had learned that I was an early (1955) owner of a Porsche in this area (Potomac Region). Since there seem to be few of us still around, I am willing to make my small contribution to history.
After my Porsche, I have owned a fair number of cars, domestic and foreign, but the Porsche was perhaps the most memorable of all. My car, a 1953 Model 356, was a relatively early product of the post-War German economy and the company seems to have not yet achieved the high standards of quality and trouble-free design which I assume characterize the later Porsches. Some background. In 1955 I was a bachelor living in Georgetown on 31st street(Washington, D.C), and owned a 1948 Studebaker Commander convertible--a sharp-looking car in its day. But I felt ready for a change and wanted to try a small foreign car which would perhaps be more suitable for the Georgetown environment, although in the Georgetown of that day there was little threat of vandalism to the convertible and street parking was plentiful enough that I could usually park in front of my apartment or within a block away. As I considered the limited selections of small imported sedans available at the time, English ones--the Hillman Minx, Morris, Triumph---seemed puny and uninteresting, as did the Volkswagen. This pretty much left the Porsche as a possibility. This started me on a trail of events documented in considerable detail in a diary or journal I was keeping at the time. The Porsche entries were scattered among many other notes of my bachelor activities: work-related, cultural, and social/not-so-cultural. Only a Porsche enthusiast might consider the car-related entries to be the most interesting. The first car I considered buying was offered by a Dr. Dick Rush who was not an M.D. but was, he said, a big operator in the relatively new field of providing insurance for mobile homes. I tried out the car and was impressed by the wonderfully light and responsive steering (this of course being before the general availability of power steering) as well as the view out over the beautifully contoured hood. But the car turned out to have a 1300cc engine instead of the more common 1500cc, and it also had a non-synchromesh transmission. Double-clutching (once into neutral and again into the next gear) didn’t appeal to me. Rush was asking $1800. I mentioned $1575 and he didn’t say no. But I didn't pursue it. In 1955 there was no Porsche agency in the DC area. Most of the relatively few Porsches here had been bought in Germany by military or civilian personnel who had been stationed there during the post-War occupancy. They had bought the cars at advantageous prices, and had probably had them shipped to the U.S. at Government expense. So while there were relatively few Porsches in the area, I found a number of them belong offered for sale at prices of up to about $2150 for the standard Model 356--I wasn't looking for the Super with its noisy roller-bearing crankshaft or for a Carrera, when I learned what those things were. For someone with no mechanical background or special interest in car maintenance, I was about to enter Porsche ownership almost completely innocent of the difference (at that time) between owning a work-a-day American car and a more highly stressed and temperamental "sports" car which might present special service problems. I certainly didn't want to become a car mechanic, but over time I developed a sort of grudging interest in doing work that had to be done. It was a hobby that, for a time, was forced upon me at the expense of other things I might have preferred doing. The Jack Pry Company was the major foreign car dealer and service facility in DC. Manhattan Auto also existed, but was concerned primarily with English cars, I believe. While Jack Pry itself was not a direct importer of Porsche cars, it could supply Porsches and parts through their relationship with Hoffman Motors in New York City. Unfortunately, I was to have many occasions to get parts from Jack Pry, or even to deal directly with Hoffman Motors. (Digression)I had encountered Hoffman Motors a few years earlier when, as a graduate student at Columbia, I was looking for a used car to buy. I noticed an ad by Hoffman for a “low-mileage” Rolls Royce that they had for sale for $800. That was within my price range and out of curiosity, I decided to take a look at it. The car was parked in front of the Hoffman showroom. It was black and looked very long indeed--perhaps too long to fit in a city parking space. The salesman said that the car had been made in 1925 for Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress. The rear passenger compartment was very luxurious with fine upholstery and ceiling of inlaid wood but the unfortunate chauffeur was exposed to the elements except for button-on side curtains and a leather roof that pulled out on a roller. The low mileage was said to be due to Miss Hutton's having used the car primarily for going to the opera. The salesman gave me a ride in the car but I didn’t drive it. For one thing, cars of that era--at least Rolls Royce’s--didn't have self-centering steering. You pulled the wheel to go around a corner then you pulled it back again. We thought it just as well not to test my skill doing this in New York City traffic. I asked the salesman whether the repairs to such a car might not be pretty expensive. He said, "Mac, if you are lucky, a Rolls with this low mileage may run quite a while without needing work. At the first sign of trouble, leave it on the side of the road and walk away." Needless to say, the impracticality of such a car for a student in New York seemed pretty obvious, and I didn't seriously consider it. In 1958, the Washington Post published a picture of the car (which I clipped and still have) the caption of which said that Barbara Hutton's former car was a star of a New York antique auto show and was then (1958) valued at $28,000. So maybe I should have bought that car from Hoffman Motors. On March 1,1955, after looking at a couple of other cars, I bought my Porsche from a Commander Fletcher for $1700. He had wanted more but had been assigned to Australia, had sold his house, and was under pressure to get rid of the car. It had only about 18,000 miles on it and appeared to be in good shape. Before buying it I had it checked out by the proprietor of McLean Motors, a small shop located between M St. and the river. Mr. McLean purported to be able to repair all makes of foreign cars. He gave the Porsche a clean bill of health. The car's windshield had a nick in it, and I insisted that the seller arrange to have the windshield replaced at his expense before he headed for Australia. He had to order the part from Hoffman Motors. It arrived in about a week and at the time it was installed (it always leaked) I also had sealed-beam headlights put in. Cmdr. Fletcher assured me that the car had never been raced or entered in other competitive events, but it was equipped with a heavy duty seat belt for the driver, which later gave rise to some suspicion in my mind since seatbelts were not required or common equipment at that time. What about Autobahn use? When I bought it, the car was a rather dull gray or silver color which I didn't like and I soon had it painted a light metallic blue. 
My troubles started about a week after I bought the car. Below I give some representative, but by no means complete, entries about the car from my diary. But I don't want to leave the impression that my life at this time was completely dominated by car troubles. I did after all have a busy career going on, I had a couple of other hobbies, and my social life was getting attention. March 7, 1955: McLean tried to fix a rattling bolt in shock absorber and appears to somehow have damaged tachometer cable in the process, as unrelated as one might suppose such items to be. March 10, 1955. Car into body shop for new paint job. Manager there said that vertical bars from certain Plymouth bumpers could be fitted to Porsche bumpers to reduce the likelihood the bumpers would be over-ridden by the bumpers of higher cars. He undertook to do this, but it turned out to be a bigger job than he expected and while I paid him more than the agreed price, he claimed that he lost money on the job. Actually, it was a futile thing to do anyhow. Since the Porsche was without a conventional frame it didn’t really have its bumper fastened to anything very substantial. April 9, 1955. Had tire re-capped for $9.18 at a place doing a big business south of M St near river. Bring in your old tire one day, get it back with new tread a couple of days later. Ordered a new tachometer cable through Pry's. April 11, 1955. My hope of finding it easy to park a small car in DC was beginning to seem unrealistic. Drivers of larger cars apparently misjudged distances when parking next to the lower Porsches. I had already been sideswiped by one parker, who did at least leave his name. The day after this had been repaired, the front fender got clipped. As a result of this sort of thing, I wired in a bumper alarm device bought at the Western Auto store, along with twin horns intended to sound a bit more threatening note than the puny beep of the original horn. While this of course was intended to warn off careless adjacent parkers, by the time the alarm sounded the bump had already happened. There was the further possibility that the offending driver, having learned about the alarm, might bump again just for the fun of it. Apri1 16, 1955. I installed tach cable, fan belt, adjusted tappets and tuned engine. I had never done any of these things before, but I followed such instructions as I could find in a manual and otherwise felt my way. The Model 356 engine was simple by modern standards, of course. May 21, 1955. Drove to Union Bridge, Maryland. where according to the word among Porsche owners a couple of genius mechanics at Bostian Brothers Garage could fix foreign cars at country prices. There I saw the Dick Rush car I had considered buying undergoing what appeared to be major repairs. June 16, 1955. Met Ray W Wilcox, a Porsche owner who was a Navy Chief who played tuba in the U.S. Navy Band. I met him through our visits to Jack Pry for parts and the guidance we could get there from Tex Hopkins, a Pry employee who raced his Super frequently and served as a sort of clearance center for Porsche information. Wilcox, while strictly an amateur mechanic, knew quite a lot about the cars and had the free time to be helpful to other owners. His father was also an amateur mechanic. They lived in Forest Heights, Maryland. and were friendly with Ed Brenahan who owned a nearby garage. Brenahan was willing to work on Porsches although by no means an expert, and was also willing to make his tools and equipment available to the Wilcox’s. This turned out to be a very valuable connection for me although in some instances, it may have been a case of the blind leading the blind. I made many trips by car or bus between Georgetown and Forest Heights. June 18, 1955. Wired Hoffman Motors for new cam followers and when they came I installed them in the street in front of my apartment. The condition of the old followers made a new camshaft seem necessary. There was none available in the area, so a few days later I filed the rough edges off the old followers and put them back in the engine to save the new followers until a new camshaft could be installed. This time, I worked in the parking lot behind the Christian Science Church as I frequently did. July 1, 1955. En route to visit my parents in New York I stopped off at Hoffman Motors to try to get a camshaft but was frustrated to find their Parts department closed for inventory. But talking with one of their mechanics made me think that a fairly complete overhaul of my engine might be necessary. July 16, 1955. Working with Wilcox, we decided the car had a bad clutch throw-out bearing. Believe it or not, this seemed like good news because it explained some problems that we had thought might be due to gear trouble. July 18, 1955. Wired Hoffman for correct size piston rings, none being available at Pry's. July 20, 1955. Took Greyhound Bus leaving at 11:30 p.m. for NYC, carrying Porsche cylinder head and valves in my old Air Forces B-4 bag to have them worked on at Hoffman’s. I walked around the city until the garage opened then killed time until picking up the parts at the end of the day. Decided to get new clutch parts while I was there. NYC was in a heat wave and it was very hot lugging half an engine around the streets. Bus got back to DC about midnight. Quite a 24 hours. July 23, 1955. Working with Wilcox in Forest Heights, with some help from Ed Brenahan and his tools, we made good progress in getting the engine together, including new rings. We got the engine into the car the next day and I left it to Ray to finish up. But he called later to say that the car when started still made ominous noises. He was disgusted and discouraged and I was afraid he would quit on the project. A couple of days later I picked up the car which ran after a fashion, but the results of all our work and expense were discouraging, to say the least. The noises were still there, one cylinder was not operating properly, and there was apparently a vapor lock just as I reached home. July 27, 1955. Went to organizational meeting of Porsche Club at Bill Sholer's apartment. I don't recall who was there besides Ray Wilcox or what was decided other than to move things along to a club. Afterward, Ray and I went to nearby Hot Shoppe and griped about Porsches. After all, these problems I had been having involved a car only about two or three years old with barely twenty thousand miles on it. There was an impression among owners that any mechanic having a German name, and better yet an accent, was especially good at fixing Porsche cars, probably having been factory-trained. I heard of such a mechanic at Olympia Motors in Falls Church and decided it was time to give a professional mechanic a crack at tuning my car. Results were unimpressive--plugs continued to foul. August 3, 1955. Ray and I put in new clutch cable and ran some Sholer’s Ristone through engine to try to free up possible stuck valve. Then I left car at DC Ignition to see what they could do with it. Their conclusion: carburetor mixture too rich. But after presumably being fixed, plugs continued to foul. August 20, 1955. Windshield leaking so badly that I had to take up the floor boards to dry out the bilge. At this point the car somehow, I suppose as the cumulative effect of all the work that had been done on it, was running well enough to be a pleasure to drive although fumes were a recurrent problem. Except for putting in new front wheel bearings, I didn't have to do work on the car through the summer and fall. I did, more as a hobby than necessity, continue tinkering with the timing, carb, and spark plugs to get the best performance out of the car. I would take the car to a little-traveled (then!) straight stretch of rural road and see what maximum speed I could reach between two trees a half mile or so apart. Then I would fiddle with the timing and/or carb and try again. The fastest I ever drove the car, on any road, was 95 MPH as indicated on a speedometer which I suspect was very optimistic. September 13, 1955. Went to meeting of Porsche Club, the second, I believe, at Blackie's Grill. I remember it as being a rather modest luncheonette type of place having few if any customers there that evening other than the handful of Porsche owners. (Blackie of course was Blackie Unger who went on to become the owner of Blackies's House of Beef –still in existence.) He also became a major real estate investor and developer in DC. My recollection is that by this time the organizers had done whatever was necessary to start admitting members, had set the dues, and had designed the Club emblem. I discovered during the winter of 1955 that my Model 356 was a less-than-ideal cold weather car. While visiting a friend on Long Island on December 20, a very cold day, the starter failed and it took half a day of my Christmas vacation to get it overhauled. A few days later, at Glens Falls, the temperature reached 14 degrees below zero. I had driven up through bad weather. The air-cooled engine didn’t generate enough heat to keep the car warm, the windshield defroster was virtually useless, and my feet got very cold. I bought a kerosene heater which I hoped to use either to heat the engine (so it would start) or to heat the car's interior but I decided (fortunately) that it was unsuitable for either purpose. Driving back to DC, I wore heavy socks and felt boots. In the following months the maintenance required was fairly routine and not worth enumerating. In general the car ran well and I enjoyed driving it. It opened the door to new acquaintances--not necessarily Porsche owners—whom I met through the sports car races at Marlboro. Things at the track at that time were so informal that almost any car owner who was willing to wear out a set of tires and risk bashed fenders could race. Often a variety of cars--MGs, Porsches, Austin Healeys, Triumphs, Alfa Romeos, and even gull-wing Mercedes might run in the same race although of course winners were determined by class. It was quite a social activity with many spectators being friends of drivers. A neighbor of mine who frequently raced his “bathtub" Porsche Speedster seemed like a bit of a traitor when he switched to an Alfa Romeo. One interesting fellow I met among car enthusiasts was Smith Hempstone Oliver, who was Curator of Land Transportation at the Smithsonian. He had written a number of books or pamphlets on antique vehicles and was a real authority on the subject although very opinionated. He gave a number of us a special tour through the old car section of the Museum. Although he was considerably older than I, he was also a bachelor living in Georgetown and we frequently had our dinners together at such or M St. restaurants as Martin’s, Britts, or Chez Odette. It was through Hemp Oliver that I met a rather eccentric man named Simond who maintained two steam-propelled cars in a rented garage in St. Matthew’s Court. In addition to a Stanley Steamer, he had a very rare Doble, the last of the steam cars. It was made, I believe, in the late 1920s or early 1930s and looked much like other cars of that period. Simonds believed that all he had to do was make some minor improvements in the Doble and the superiority of steam over the internal combustion engine would be obvious. Marriage in the fall of 1956 meant the end of my life in Georgetown. While my wife was tolerant of the Porsche and its limitations up to a point, after we had moved to Virginia we agreed that the time had come for a different car. I put an ad in the paper and the next morning bright and early, a buyer appeared at the door. I suspected that he was a dealer, but he denied it. He said he knew nothing about Porsches and just wanted a small car, not too expensive. He expressed some dismay at learning that the car had a manual transmission, but wanted to test-drive it anyhow. During the drive he clashed the gears alarmingly by poor clutch coordination. But he was still interested in buying the car. After some negotiation we agreed on a price of $1700, the same figure I had paid for the car nearly 2 years before. From one point of view, this meant that I had driven the car for that period without incurring any depreciation on it. On the other hand, I had spent considerable money on parts and repairs in addition to putting many hours of my own time into it. But much of the time the car had provided an interesting hobby. So on balance, I was satisfied. The buyer pulled seventeen one-hundred dollar bills from a wad he was carrying in his pocket and I made over the title to him. When I expressed some nervousness about the quickness and informality with which the transaction was being handled, he offered the novice seller some advice from a more experienced business man. “When a sales deal leaves you with the cash… all of it… in your hand, relax. After that, any problems are for the buyer to worry about.” I’m not sure that an attorney would give a good grade to this bit of legal advice, but it seemed plausible at the time. The buyer then put some license plates that he happened to have with him on the Porsche, said he would return later to get the car he had arrived in, and drove off briskly with no clashing of gears. He was a dealer, all right. ___________________________________________________________________________________
POTOMAC REGION PAST PRESIDENTS
by George Whitmore, Potomac Region HistorianOn this Presidents’ Day 2006, PCA Potomac Region would like to recognize all its Past Presidents. Your region presidents have guided Potomac Region since its inception in 1954 through the succeeding fifty-one years. In 1992 then President Tom Walker initiated a Past Presidents pin, which was first, presented at the 1993 Potomac Region picnic at Senica Park. Several past Presidents who attended, including 1968 President Joe Berger received the first pins.   Since that time at some prominent Potomac function, to permit public recognition, Potomac’s past Presidents have been presented a PCA Potomac Region Past Presidents pin to recognize their service to the region. Other Potomac past Presidents who could be contacted have been given their pins. Pictured below is Bill Sholar, the first Founders' Region president. (photo copyright Panaroma Managzine). 
Bill Sholar | 1954 - 55 | Bill Sholar | | 1956 | Bill Sholar | | 1957 | Harvey Brown | | 1958 | Hank Mann/Jim Richimer
The rules have changed since 1958, but then preisdent Hank Mann
sold his Porsche and bought an “Eye-tallian” car. As a result, he
had to give up the Presidency, and the Vice President, Jim Richimer became President. | | 1959 | Lynn Sholar | | 1960 | Kick Keys | | 1961 | George Duvall | | 1962 | Carroll Le Fon | | 1963 | J. R. Newbrough | | 1964 | Jack Frazer | | 1965 | Edward Mernone | | 1966 | Dave Primm | | 1967 | Edward Ver Hoef | | 1968 | Joseph Berger | | 1969 | Dan Rowzie | | 1970 | Lee Fowler | | 1971 | Lee Sammons | | 1972 | Pete Schroeder | | 1973 | Jerry Huffman | | 1974 | Al Collins | | 1975 | Lanny Hughey | | 1976 | Phoebe Harper | | 1977 | Ed Marsden | | 1978 | Bob Braunohler | | 1979 | Alan Friedman | | 1980 | Dick Berner | | 1981 | Andras Nagy | | 1982 | Tim Berardelli | | 1983 | Bill Tyrrell | | 1984 | Shawn Woodhead | | 1985 | Sandy Langus | | 1986 | Paul Weston | | 1987 | Jim Loftus | | 1988 | Dan McChesney | | 1989 | Rich Wojiochiecz | | 1990 | Chuck Fountain | | 1991 | Bob Williams | | 1992 | Tom Walker | | 1993 | Fred Phelps | | 1994 | Diana Love | | 1995 | Mick Malucci | | 1996 | Dan Dazzo | | 1997 | Scott Hunt | | 1998 | Fred Smart | | 1999 | Paul Amico | | 2000 | Doug Thompson | | 2001 | Caren Gladle | | 2002 | Betty Church | | 2003 | Tom Trew | | 2004 | Pete Kauffman | | 2005 | Roberto Alvarez | | 2006-07 | Art Parsons | | 2008 | Tony Kelly | | 2009-10 | Tuffy von Briesen |
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