Ferdinand Porsche was around 72 years old when the 1st hand-made, hand-beaten Porsche 356 rolled down the road at Gmund. It was 1948 but Porsche had started his career before the turn of the century.
Just what was he doing for his first fifty years?
The one word answer is’plenty’. A little longer answer is designing some of the top motoring icons and fastest autos of the twentieth century. Or, getting all the experience, data and abilities needed to produce one of the hottest and most suave lines of sports cars in the world.
It all started in the late nineteenth century. Porsche’s pop was a tinsmith, but young Ferdinand preferred the new-fangled electricity. He worked for an electrical equipment manufacturer before planning electric vehicles for Lohner. The Lohner-Porsche, with electrical motors in the front wheel hubs, ( one of the first front-wheel drives ), was exhibited at the Paris exhibition in 1900 and won a Grand Prize for 25 years old Porsche.
Porsche kept developing the Lohner. Motors in all four centers made it one of the earliest four-wheel drives and a petrol engine and generator instead of batteries made it one of the first mixed drive autos. Porsche himself raced one of the petrol-electric cars.
In 1905, Porsche moved from Lohner to Austro-Daimler where he became technical Director, and later managing Director. His first petrol vehicle there was developed into the sports model that won the 1910 Prince Henry Trial.
Cars weren’t the only mechanical designs of the self-taught automotive genius. In 1912 he came up with a four-cylinder aero engine. Its layout was a flattened X, almost a flat four.
World War I had Porsche working for the army, coming up with gun tractors, motorized artillery pieces and a great road train carrying an 81-ton gun and pulling four trailers each with eight-wheel drive. Total weight was 150 tons! It used the Lohner-Porsche methodology of electric motors in the hearts with a twenty liter, 150 hp traction engine providing the power.
In 1917 he got an honorary doctorate from Vienna Technical University.
Porsche turned to small automobiles after WWI, coming up with the Sascha, which could hit 89 mph with a miniscule 1100 cc engine. These cars came first and 2nd in their class in the 1921 Targa Florio. However, differences of opinion with other directors of Austro-Daimler led on to a move to Daimler in Stuttgart, as Technical Director with a seat on the board.
Here Porsche fixed the poor performance of Daimler’s new two-liter supercharged race automobile, which went on to take the 1st 3 places in its class in the 1924 Targa Florio, including 1st place overall. Porsche was awarded another honorary doctorate, this time from Stuttgart University for his achievements.
At Daimler he designed one of the most famous cars in history, the seven-liter six-cylinder turbocharged Mercedes which progressed through the K and S series to the SS, SSK and SSKL. These cars dominated racing in 1928-30. As well, he worked on diesel engines for trucks and airplane engines.
Daimler merged with Benz in 1926, and the mixed board refused Porsche’s push for tiny and light Daimler-Benz vehicles. Porsche quit and moved to Steyr where he created a huge expensive car with a 5.3-liter straight-eight.
Steyr collapsed in the great depression though, and in 1930 Porsche was unemployed.
At the age of fifty five, when many people nowadays are taking early retirement, Porsche opened his own design bureau with a prime group of engineers that he had formerly worked with, including his own son Ferdinand’Ferry’ Porsche.
His first job was the Wander W.17, a tiny medium-priced six-cylinder car. A little auto for Zundapp followed. Named the Volksauto, it was an early ancestor of the Beetle, with a rear-mounted radial engine and totally independent suspension. It didn’t go into production because of an upturn in Zundapp’s standard market of motorcycles.
In 1932 Russia offered Porsche the job of State Designer. It was an interesting offer, but he turned it down.
Another tilt at a tiny automobile came from NSU. The Zundapp was dusted of to give the basic ideas, but this time a flat-four air-cooled engine was employed at the rear, along with torsion bar suspension and swing spindles at the back. 3 prototypes were built before the project was abandoned, but the VW Beetle was getting closer.
Hot racing automobiles were still on the drawing board, with the Porsche team building a real monster for Auto-Union. It had a 4.4 liter supercharged V16 mounted at the rear. With the weight at the rear, swing spindles, thin tires and incredible power, ( it’s reported they could spin the wheels at one hundred mph ) these cars were a handful to drive, but they won races!
Meanwhile, Hitler was also gaining incredible power, and one of his ideas was for a’people’s car’. Porsche got the job of planning it, and all his previous experience went into the fastest selling car ever, the Volkswagen Beetle. 3 Beetles were turned into light-weight sports coupes for the proposed 1939 Berlin-Rome road race.
The race never happened as the Second World War started.
During WWII the Beetle was turned into the Kubelwagen, the German equivalent of the Jeep. Porsche designed the Tiger, Ferdinand and Maus Tanks, which all utilized the mixed drive with an internal combustion engine driving hub-mounted electric motors.
The war stopped and the French threw Professor Porsche, son Ferry, and son-in-law Anton Piech in prison as war perpetrators. ( fully baseless ). Ferry was released after a few months but the Professor was kept with France demanding 1,000,000 Francs for his release.
Ferry and the design bureau took on new projects to pay the cash. When the Professor was released, the design of the very first Porsche branded sports automobile was way below way. This auto was the 356, the start of a line of exciting thoroughbreds which are some of the most fascinating sports cars in the world today.
Ferdinand Porsche may have been a humble start in life but he was a car genius and for half a century he designed some of the most magnificent machinery ever. The Porsche autos of today continue his legacy.
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