Porsche the beginning

It`s hard to say exactly which is the beginning of Porsche

story. It could be in 1950, when the famous Max Hoffman

introduced the Porsche 356 to the United States. Or in 1948

when the first automobile to bear the name Porsche was introduced.

But in order to understand Porsche’s heritage and its philosophy

we need to go back to 1875, when, in September, at the home

of a tinsmith in the Bohemian village of Haffersdorf, a son was

born. His name was Ferdinand Porsche.

Since his adolescence, Ferdinand Porsche showed glimpses of

technical genius: at the age of 18, he wired family's home for

electricity in 1893. Still, he didn’t show many signs of disciplined

engineering skills that will eventually become his trademark. Even

if the “Doctor” is usually appended to his name, it is in essence

honorary, since his only formal technical training was as a part-time

engineering student in Vienna.

By the age of 25, the young Ferdinand Porsche had entered the

field of automotive design. His first car design was already

accepted by Lohner & Co. of Vienna. Over the next 20 years,

Ferdinand Porsche, the temperamental but brilliant engineer

succeeded in associating with every major automobile manufacturer

in Germany. At the same time, he designed a dozen of the most

technically significant cars in history.

Working for Mercedes-Benz, he helped develop the most revered

Mercedes-Benz cars of all time: the SSK series. For NSU, he

designed Auto Union Wanderer and the Type 32, a precursor of the

Volkswagen Beetle.

After being dismissed from Mercedes for disagreeing with the firm's

staid engineering policies, Porsche decided to establish what later

became Porsche A.G.: his own engineering consulting group. In a

small office in Stuttgart, the senior Dr. Porsche gathered a select

group of engineers to work under the dramatic name, "Doctor of

Engineering Ferdinand Porsche, Inc., Construction Facility for Land,

Air, and Sea Transportation." One of his employees was his youthful

son, Ferry. His primary interest was one that any young man might

select: sports and racing cars

The senior Dr. Porsche and his team were kept extremely busy. The

consulting firm developed for Steyr (now the utility-vehicle wing of the

Steyr- Daimler-Puch combine), the Austria luxury sedan, but it did not

progress beyond the prototype stage. They worked a lot for Auto

Union, now Audi: the company developed the Front, the world's first

front-drive economy car. They astonished Auto Union with the mid-engine

Grand Prix cars and their supercharged V-12 and V-16 engines

which, together with Mercedes- Benz racers, dominated European auto

racing for nearly a decade.

After that, the firm created its best-known designs for NSU and Zundapp.

The pair of prototypes was characterized by Dr. Porsche's patented

torsion-bar suspension and a rear-mounted engine. Since neither

company moved rapidly enough to manufacture the designs, Porsche

sold the concept to the German government. Then, he oversaw the

construction of a plant on Wolfsburg to manufacture the design. His

drawings called the car the Type 60. The world came to know it as the

Volkswagen Beetle

After the second World War, the Porsche Company started to create vehicles

that beard its name, and so became knows world wide. Now, nearly a

century later, Porsche became the marque and the family that created

outstanding, often unique and surely lasting contributions to automotive

engineering and design.