Porsche 550 Spyder Replica's

The 1950's Porsche 550 Spyder was Porsche's first  sportscar purpose built for racing.  Though underpowered compared to the competition, the car's light weight allowed it to frequently outperform the competition and gave Porsche it's first overall win in 1956.   The Spyder is extremely small (1 foot shorter than a Miata!) and low to the ground a fact which allowed a driver to drive under a railroad crossing gate during a race.  The Spyder is also infamous as being the car James Dean was driving when he was killed.  In the 1980's Greg Beck started building high quality custom replica's of the 550 and it remains an extremely popular "kit car".   The beautiful car above is a replica from Thunder Ranch built and photographed by Aaron Aslanian.  The kit cars generally perform well, hitting 60mph between 5-6 seconds with a souped up VW Beetle motor.  Personally I would love to have one of these, just for the hell of it.