Europe Car

The Story of Porsche

By Guy Starbuck

Identifying the beginning of the Porsche story could be somewhat difficult. Should it be the year 1950? This was when Max Hoffman brought the Porsche 356 over to the United States. Or should it be the year 1948, when the first vehicle ever to bear the name Porsche was introduced into the market. However, in order to get into the rationale behind the design and power concept of the Porsche, you have to go all the way to 1875. It was in this year, precisely in September and in the home of a tinsmith in Haffersdorf, that Ferdinand Porsche was born.

Before he had become of age, Ferdinand Porsche had shown a lot of traits which were indications of his future technical genius. At the age of 18 in 1893, he single handedly wired his family home with electricity. However in terms of the main thing, he never showed signs of the engineering skills that would later prove to be his trademark. Even the appellation "Doctor" which is appended to his name is largely honorary since the only formal training he ever had was as a part-time engineering student in Vienna.

At the age of 25, Ferdinand Porsche had just made his entry into the world of automotive design since his initial car design had already been accepted by Lohner & Co. in Vienna. Over the next two decades, Ferdinand Porsche became a success with every major manufacturer of automobiles in Germany. At this same time he designed some of the most significant cars ever to grace the world of car history.

When he worked for Mercedes-Benz, he was a critical element in the development of the most popular Mercedes Benz series of all time: the SSK series. At the NSU he was responsible for the design of the Auto Union Wanderer and the Type 32 which was a precursor to the Volkswagen Beetle.

Porsche was later dismissed from Mercedes for disagreeing with the engineering policies of the firm. Later on Porsche made a decision to establish his own company which was also an engineering consulting group. All this started from a small office located in Stuttgart and Dr. Porsche had a number of engineers working under the name of his company "Doctor of Engineering Ferdinand Porsche, Inc., Construction Facility for Land, Air, and Sea Transportation.". Of all his employees, one of them was his son Ferry Porsche who was interested primarily in racing cars as well as sports.

Dr. Porsche was extremely busy engaging in a number of ideas and projects for several different firms. He helped in developments for Steyr as well as the company then known as Auto Union and now known as Audi. Porsche's company developed the Front and also a number of mid-engine Grand Prix vehicles and the supercharged V-12 and V-16 engines which made Mercedes-Benz racers the best on the European racing scene for more than a decade.

After such developments, Porsche's firm created some of its most popular designs for the NSU and Zundapp. The prototypes of these designs made use of the patents that Dr. Porsche had filed for the torsion-bar suspension and a rear-mounted engine.

Because both companies did not take the step forward to manufacture these prototypes and sell them on the market, Dr. Porsche took his own steps by selling his prototypes to the German government. After he did this, he then managed a government plant in Wolfsburg overseeing the manufacture of his designs. His project was initially called Type 60 and later on the Type 60 was known, manufactured and sold as the Volkswagen Beetle.

It was later on after the war that Porsche started to create cars that bore his name and which are now associated with his legacy and his gifts to the automotive world.