Klaus Ziegler began his career in 1956 as an apprentice at Karosseriebau Erhard Wendler in Reutlingen. Founded in 1840, Wendler was by the 1920s an established coach builder and car manufacturer, in the days when companies used third-party bodies for their chassis. Wendler was one of the coach builders that Porsche turned to for more specialised work, and in 1954 the company built the first batch of RS 1500 Spyders for private clients.
The RS Spyder was 14-year-old Klaus’s introduction to working life. In the German engineering industry, the Lehrling (apprentice) had a challenging schedule of shop-floor learning and evening study. Eventually, it became his responsibility to hammer in the rivets on the Spyder’s aluminium body. He remembers Jo Bonnier, then a Porsche works driver, coming to Wendler to complain about vibrations on his 718 RSK. When
