After Restoring Grandpa’s Porsche 356, Holly Zelonish Is Hitting the Road

In 1963, Ernie Royal, a chemist at LTV Steel in Youngstown, Ohio, got the itch to buy a sports car. He found the ’55 Porsche 356 Continental Cabriolet 1500 Super you see here and snatched it up for $1000. Royal couldn’t get enough of his little cabriolet, driving it daily—with gusto—for nearly 20 years, and in so doing ignited an air-cooled passion within his family that would last for generations.

Royal was one among many in postwar America who found themselves caught up in the sports car craze of the ’50s and ’60s. Like many sporty European offerings, Royal’s 356 owes its stateside presence to importer Max Hoffman. Aware of the massive demand in this new market segment, Hoffman first imported the 356 in 1950 and, often over a dinner table, counseled Ferry Porsche on the path to success for his little dynamo of a car.

Hoffman knew his stuff: From establishing the brand by getting 356s in the hands of racers and stars and instigating the creation of the Porsche crest, to the introduction of the stripped-down Speedster that came in under $3000 (about $35k in today’s dollars), the man’s efforts paid dividends. In five short years, U.S. sales accounted for half of Porsche’s production.

Not every idea worked out, though: See that Continental emblem adorning the front fender? The thought that yielded it started out innocently enough. Hoffman insisted that Americans wanted names on cars, not numbers, and convinced Porsche to call it a Continental for the 1955 model year. Within months, Ford, who owned the rights to the Continental name, threatened to put the fledgling brand out of business, and that was that. The Continental badge didn’t make it through a year of production. Porsche still had fenders left over with holes in them, so that’s when the European name came in. They used that until they ran out of those fenders and never put a name on the 356 again.

Brief run-ins with one of the Big Three aside, by 1955 upstart Porsche had become profitable and was burnishing its reputation on-track and off. A class win at Le Mans in 1951 gave credence to the car’s sporty looks and helped justify its price, which hovered around Jaguar XK120 territory despite being significantly down on displacement to the Jag. The three flavors of 356—Speedster, Coupe, and Cabriolet—offered buyers the chance to spec out their car like a raw racer or a well-appointed comfortable cruiser. At around $3900 new (about $45k today), Royal’s car was as decked out as they came: a Continental Cabriolet 1500 Super, one of just eight 356s so outfitted to make it to the states.

The 1500 Super designation treated to the 1.5-liter flat four to larger Solex carbs, a boost in compression, and a roller-bearing crankshaft, eking out 70 hp, 15 more than the regular 1500 engine. The souped-up Super loved to rev. And drivers had to rev it out, affirms Bob Royal, Ernie’s son: “You needed to drive at high RPMs all the time to keep the oil [pressure] up—most people just piddled around.”

Indeed, many a Super ended up needing engine repairs—and a swap to a conventional crankshaft—because they weren’t pushed as intended. This car still had its original crank, and it was in good shape, so we know that Royal drove this car with such verve.

“Grandpa must’ve driven the hell out of this thing,” says a smiling Holly Zelonish, Ernie Royal’s granddaughter and Bob’s daughter.

This past summer, a little more than 60 years after Ernie Royal purchased the car, I joined Bob, Holly, and Holly’s husband Jason in Canfield, Ohio to learn more about the gleaming Adria Blue 356 that means so much to their family.

I first met Holly on the 2024 Amelia Island Concours lawn, where she was standing next to the 356, photo album in hand, eagerly sharing the car’s multi-generational journey with passersby. Fresh off a four-year-long restoration, the Zelonishes’ 356 would win its class later that afternoon.

Holly didn’t have eyes on Amelia, or concours lawns in general, at the beginning of this journey. She and Jason had simply been thinking about restoring an old car, and those of the air-cooled variety were a family tradition: “Besides this 356, my grandpa always had some cool flat-window Beetles, and my grandma used to drive a Beetle—we always had those kinds of cars,” says Holly, who herself had a Karmann Ghia when she was younger.

“I had a ’75 convertible Beetle, and it just wasn’t a great one to fix up,” Holly says. “My grandpa always said we’d be the ones to finish the 356, so I sold the Beetle and we started researching the Porsche—If we were going to restore a car, this would be the one.”

The 356 was a natural option. When Holly’s grandfather gave the 356 to Holly’s dad in the early ’80s, the car was ready for a refresh. Bob got so far as spraying it Guards Red, but, as it often does, life had other plans, and the car sat. But, from documentation to nuts and bolts, he kept everything, and the car was remarkably complete: the perfect canvas for a restoration.

The Zelonishes didn’t know how rare the car’s spec was at the outset, but the two diligently started leafing through the books and paperwork they had on the car, along with the trove of parts that Holly’s dad had dutifully kept while he was the car’s steward. Armed with information, they reached out to experts in the community, including noted marque expert Albert Häfner, to help identify what they had. Once they realized that, in addition to the value of the family memories, their 356 was one of just a handful like it in the states, they decided to it’d be wise to have a shop perform the car’s rehabilitation. After soliciting guidance from several pros, including Porsche outlaw builder Rod Emory on how best to bring the car back to life and who could do it, they realized that the right person for the job was practically in their own back yard.

Pete Jackson, who has run Pete’s Custom Coachbuilding in Newbury Township, Ohio, for about 18 years, started working on Porsches 30 years ago when he was 16. After dabbling in obscure cars and some offbeat Italian machinery, he built his reputation restoring air-cooled Porsches. The Zelonishes could’ve shipped their car to a shop on one of the coasts, where Porsches tend to have a stronger following, but after seeing Pete’s work, they decided to stay local.

That choice paid off, as not long after they dropped the car off at Pete’s, the world shut down. Though COVID slowed things, the Zelonishes got to check in on their car and stay involved in the process in a way that’d have been much more logistically challenging if it were hundreds or thousands of miles away.

The car had been swathed in a few different shades of paint over its life, and the Zelonishes wanted to go back to how it left the factory. They knew the name of the color—Adria Blue—but it wasn’t till Pete’s shop removed the convertible top fabric from its frame that they got to see exactly what it looked like. “I’m an art teacher,” says Holly, “so I have them bring home hundreds of paint samples, and I keep looking at ’em and looking at ’em, picking the same exact paint sample to match this color. Then Pete did some spray outs to get it to match exactly.”

Between Holly’s eye for visuals, Jason’s organization and diligent research (he’d labeled and sorted every part with the help of a detailed manual that came with the car before handing everything over to Pete), and Pete’s restoration skills, the car came together beautifully and was ready in early 2024.

Since Jackson had taken cars to Amelia in the past, he submitted the car for the Concours. “We were skiing with the kids and I get a text message from Pete that says, ‘check your email,'” says Jason. “It was from Amelia Island, accepting the car for the show. I thought, ‘wow, this testament to how good a job they did and how cool the car is.’ Holly’s dad would take her to shows when she was young, but we hadn’t really considered ourselves concours people.”

Since the win at Amelia, Jackson has taken the 356 on the road to other concours where it’s gathered more accolades, and the Zelonishes have filled quite a few weekends with backroad rides and low-key local shows. “I drove it up to a show in Cleveland,” says Jason. “A guy noticed the bugs on the nose and windscreen and asked if I drove it there—he almost couldn’t believe it!”

The Zelonishes’ story isn’t all that uncommon in the world of early Porsches. “A lot of customers have a connection to the brand through their family,” shares Jackson. Even if their car wasn’t an heirloom, there’s often a discernible link. “Maybe their dad owned a 911, so they bought a brand new Porsche, but they work backwards from there. In the 356, they are reminded that Porsche has a deeper past.”

History’s strong pull—whether from the allure of the brand or from fond family memories—couples with relative mechanical simplicity to make 356s among the steadiest collector Porsches on the market. After a healthy rise in values for almost all iterations about a decade ago, values have mostly remained even since, rising slightly during the market’s boom and so far defying its subsequent retreat.

While any spec of 356 is worth quite a bit of coin, a production run of roughly 76,000 means that they are a much more accessible (and arguably more usable) entry point into sports cars of the period than Italian brands. Rare engines, combinations, or short-lived characteristics like the Continental name help individual values, and as we’ve observed across almost all facets of the market, there’s a significant premium associated with top-flight condition.

According to Hagerty data, early Porsches do tend to get driven more than many other European marques from the era. Chalk it up, as Jackson shared, to their simple service requirements, or maybe particularly enthusiastic owners. In the case of the Zelonishes, I’d say it’s a healthy dose of both, along with their knowing how Ernie Royal felt about the 356.

“My grandpa would’ve wanted us to drive it and enjoy it,” says Holly. “Otherwise it’s not worth having.”