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In the 21st century, the Porsche name is associated with rugged, subtle sports cars, high-performance sedans and SUVs, and the general dominance of motorsport. All with one man: Ferdinand Porsche, an Austrian engineer and businessman. Far beyond the creation of his company, Ferdinand Porsche played an essential role in the evolution of the automobile and the creation of a global automobile industry, earning him the posthumous title of Automotive Engineer of the Century. So says a young Austrian without an engineering degree shaped the automobile era.
Ferdinand Porsche was born in 1875 in Bohemia, then part of Austria-Hungary, in what is now the Czech Republic. The young Ferdinand was fascinated by engineering and electricity. As a teenager, he worked in his father’s auto repair shop and attended categories. at Imperial Polytechnical College in the afternoons.
At the age of 18, Ferdinand Porsche hired through Béla Egger
Around 1897, Porsche left Béla Egger & Co. for coachbuilder Jakob Lohner & Co. in Vienna. The company made royal carriages for the monarchs of Europe and England and had just begun building electric horseless carriages. The company’s first vehicles showed great technical promise, but were seriously hampered by the weight of their enormous batteries.
In 1901, Ferdinand Porsche came up with a strangely futuristic solution by installing a Daimler internal combustion engine in a Lohner coach. The engine would drive a generator to drive the electric motors and power a small backup battery. It is the world’s first hybrid-electric. vehicle, more than a hundred years before hybrids became fashionable. The company reportedly sells more than three hundred Lohner-Porsche Mixte hybrids, used as buses, trucks and fire trucks.
In 1906, Porsche left Lohner as lead designer at Austro-Daimler, the Austro-Hungarian department of the engine manufacturer Daimler. He created impressive cars that won many races and in 1916 he was appointed CEO. Although he never earned a university degree, that same year he earned an honorary doctorate in engineering from the Technical University of Vienna.
In 1923, Porsche moved to Stuttgart, Germany, and became technical director of Daimler. The company was at the forefront of automotive design and engineering from the beginning, and it is here that Porsche can work on the world’s most complex race cars. Daimler merges with Benz
By then, Porsche had solidified its automotive design philosophy. He liked smaller cars, which perhaps only gained speed and power thanks to their light weight and state-of-the-art equipment. He forced Daimler-Benz to invest in this type of machines, but the company’s control chose to concentrate on large, heavy and sumptuous vehicles. Porsche left the company in 1929.
In 1931, Porsche introduced his own company, creatively called “Dr. Ing. h. c. F. Porsche GmbH, Konstruktionen und Beratungen für Motoren und Fahrzeugbau”: Doctor of Engineering (honorary) Ferdinand Porsche Company for the design and consulting of engines and vehicles. Porsche had no goal of making its own vehicles; Rather, it was an engineering consulting company, made up of engineers Porsche had met during his paintings. The Porsche Company designed vehicles for the German manufacturer Wanderer and other leading vehicle brands, and Ferdinand Porsche continued to expand his lightweight vehicle concept that had been rejected by Daimler-Benz. He also began work on a concept for a mid-engined aerodynamic race car. In 1932, four troubled German vehicle brands came together to shape Auto Union, buying the design of Porsche’s mid-engine racing car and turning it into the Auto Union Type A, B and C racing vehicles.
In 1933, at the Berlin Motor Show, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler announced two government systems to revive the German automobile industry. The first, a state-sponsored racing program aimed at creating a “high-speed German automobile industry,” which would fund the progression of Silver Arrow race cars through Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union. Currently, the People’s Car program, which would finance the progression of an affordable vehicle, will boost Germany.
The following year, Ferdinand Porsche and his company were hired through Hitler’s government to expand the People’s Car. To carry out the project, Porsche had to renounce his Czechoslovak citizenship (Hitler considered Czechs to be non-Aryan “subhumans”). ), a member of the Nazi Party, and enlisted in the SS. Porsche would be known as “the wonderful German engineer”, and contributed to the paintings of the Silver Arrow race cars, the tanks of the German army and the Kubelwagen troop transport. Porsche oversaw the structure of the “Stadt des KdF-Wagens”, a government-built factory in the city that would be called Wolfsburg, where Volkswagen’s world headquarters are still located.
In 1945, after the end of the European war, Ferdinand Porsche travelled to France to discuss moving Volkswagen’s design and production to that country as part of a war reparations agreement. Soon, Porsche was arrested by the French government and imprisoned as a war criminal. , for his close collaboration with Hitler and his alleged use of forced hard labor in factories supervised by Porsche. He was detained in France until 1949 and was released only when his circle of relatives was able to pay one million francs to the French government.
While Ferdinand Porsche was imprisoned in France, his son, also named Ferdinand but nicknamed Ferry, ran the Porsche company in Austria. Ferry had worked directly with his father since his teenage years and had helped found the Porsche design consultancy in Stuttgart. Ferry moved the Porsche company to Austria to avoid Allied bombing. After being briefly imprisoned for war crimes alongside his father in France, Ferry returned to Austria and began work on what would become the Porsche 356 sports car.
The 356 was designed and built by Ferry, taking inspiration from his father’s concepts of lightweight, aerodynamic sports cars. It used parts designed and manufactured by Ferdinand, Sr. , for Volkswagen. In 1947, the Porsche company began hand-building the first order of 356 sports cars in a converted sawmill in Gmünd, Austria.
This marked a moment of transition for the Porsche company. Previously, Porsche was strictly a design and engineering consulting company, hired through other car manufacturers to help them with the development and production of their cars. With the advent of the 356, Porsche has become a car manufacturer in its own right.
In 1947, after increasing the budget of the Porsche company, Ferry Porsche returned to France and received the release of his father Ferdinand. By 1949, Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg plant was in full swing and Beetles were being mass-produced under the supervision of British occupation forces. That same year, Volkswagen and the Porsche company signed a large agreement. Porsche would make constant innovations in the design and engineering of the Volkswagen, and in return, the company would collect a royalty on each of the Beetles sold. , Volkswagen would supply Porsche with the raw material needed to make sports cars, and Porsche would have access to Volkswagen’s global network of intermediaries to distribute its sports cars.
Ferdinand Porsche made his last stop at Volkswagen’s Wolfsburg plant in 1950. The undeniable and affordable people’s car he had designed was already a huge success, putting Europe on wheels while post-war reconstruction was still underway. The Porsche 356 was still a somewhat difficult sports car to understand, but it was gaining traction in Europe. Porsche and Volkswagen had not yet caused a stir in the United States, but both car brands were developing and succeeding. Ferdinand died in early 1951, five months before Porsche. it won its elegance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the beginning of a motorsport dynasty that lasted more than 70 years and continues to this day. The air-cooled Volkswagen Beetle remained on the market until 2003, becoming the longest-lasting vehicle produced on the market. in history and the best-selling car in the world, with more than 21 million units sold.
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