Ferdinand Porsche played a crucial role in the development of planes and racing cars, and the development of tanks for the Wehrmacht.  He’s a car engineer with more than 1000 patents to his name.  He was chosen chief engineer at Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart in the 1920s.  Later on , he set up his own engineering workshop and designed among others the Volkswagen.  At the plant where Volkswagen was made, Wolfsburg, he was chief of operations and at the end of the war he was interned by the Allies.

He was released a few years on and began building his first vehicle with his son, Ferry Porsche.  The car was named the Porsche 356 and it appeared to be a sports automobile and a harking back to the Volkswagen.  It had the same 4 cylinder boxer engine that was rear-mounted, just like the VW.  It was a long way from being a powerful sports vehicle, developing only 40 bhp and a maximum speed of 87 mph ( 140 km/h ).  First produced as a convertible and later as a hard top it seperated by the elegant and innovative body.  It was developed in theworkshop of Erwin Komenda, a master of restrained streamlining who had been in command of sheet metal and design methodologies at Porsche since the VW Beetle.  The new style of closed coupe was designed by Komenda and it shortly became the embodiment of the sports vehicle, thanks to its fastback.

This practice was continued by Komenda and Ferdinand’Butzi’ Porsche, the founder’s grandchild, with the 911. 

The 911 became simply recognizable : it had engaging sloping bonnet and what later was characteristic’frog eye’ headlights, curves running from the top edge of the windscreen to the rear bumper and a straight waistline.  From a functional and technical viewpoint it was more like BMW 1500, although it kept the stylistic features of the original Porsche.  The new 911 will become the foundation stone of Porsche’s identity, even though the design was not always appreciated.  In the 1970s and 1980s, the designers tries to distance Porsche from its mythical design brought the company to the edge of disaster.  The more modern 924 model,’a folk’s Porsche’, developed with Volkswagen, as well as the 928 were a long way from satisfying the expectations. 

In the 1990s, the company noticed that what for over 20 years was understood as a straitjacket, it was actually a marketadvantage.  During the 1990s, Porsche became highly rewarding since they now knew the typical Porsche features were timeless.  Nearly 40 folk now worked in the design department on further developments of the long-running 911.  These developments included the 911 GTI, a strong combinationof sports and racing vehicle, put forward by the in-house designer Anthony R.  Hatter.  In 1999, chief designer proudly presented the new Boxster which enabled Porshe to build a second independent range of models.

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