Long before the Porsche Panamera, there was a four-door Porsche 911. It was not a factory production car, and it was not a hot rod in the usual sense. It was a carefully engineered one-off built to look like something Porsche itself could have made. The car was commissioned in 1967 by Texas Porsche distributor William J. Dick Jr., who wanted a special Christmas gift for his wife. According to Road & Track, Porsche declined to build the car itself, so the project went to Dick Troutman and Tom Barnes in Culver City, California. Troutman & Barnes were not backyard modifiers. They were respected fabricators with experience in race cars and prototypes, which helped explain why the finished car looked strange, but not careless.
The idea was simple and radical: take a Porsche 911S and turn it into a usable four-door sedan. In the late 1960s, that must have sounded almost absurd. The 911 was still a young sports car, famous for its compact shape, rear-mounted engine, and driver-focused personality. Stretching it into a family car challenged what a Porsche was supposed to be, decades before the company would sell the Cayenne, Panamera, Macan, and Taycan.
Built to Look Like Porsche Could Have Done It
The conversion began with a standard 911S that was cut apart and stretched. Troutman & Barnes added 21 inches to both the wheelbase and overall length, then created a new roof panel so the bodyline would flow from the windshield to the rear window. A conventional center pillar was added, and the rear doors were made from standard Porsche 900-series doors. They were rear-hinged, giving the car a “suicide door” layout similar in spirit to a Lincoln Continental.
The details were surprisingly thoughtful. The rear doors used custom window frames, and the car received electric window lifts using motors similar to those from Porsche’s electric sunroof system. The interior was trimmed with deep orange-brown leather inspired by a pair of Lucchese boots owned by Mrs. Dick. Porsche’s own upholstery shop reportedly matched the leather and built the seats before the remaining hides were sent to California for completion.
There were practical upgrades too. The car received Pirelli Cinturato tires on simple chrome production wheels, because the builders felt they suited the sedan character better than the 911S alloy wheels. A Sportomatic transmission was installed before the car was shipped back to Texas, where it later received Porsche-Delanair air conditioning. The result was still recognizably a Porsche 911, but with a completely different purpose: not a lightweight sports car, but a luxury four-door Porsche for real use.
The One-Off That Predicted the Panamera
William Dick did not build the four-door 911 only as a gift. He reportedly wanted to show Porsche that there could be demand for a more practical four-door model. In that sense, the car was less a novelty than an argument. It suggested that Porsche’s sports-car identity might be flexible enough to support a family-friendly performance sedan, even if the company was not ready to admit it in the 1960s.
That makes the Troutman-Barnes 911 feel like an accidental preview of the Porsche Panamera. When the Panamera finally arrived decades later, some purists resisted the idea of a four-door Porsche. But the basic question had been asked long before: could Porsche build something with four doors and still make it feel special? This one-off 911S answered yes, even if it took private money and California fabrication to prove it.
Unlike many oddball one-off cars, this one still exists. The Petersen Automotive Museum identifies it as a 1967 Porsche 911 S Four-Door and notes that William Dick commissioned it as both a gift for his wife and a demonstration of the idea’s viability. Its survival gives the car a stronger place in Porsche history than a rumor or magazine curiosity. It is not factory-built, but it is factory-believable.
