Ferdinand Porsche was around 72 years of age when the first hand-made, hand-beaten Porsche 356 rolled down the line 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 slightly longer answer is coming up with some of the top motoring icons and fastest cars of the twentieth century.  Or, getting all of the experience, information and abilities wanted to produce one of the most up to date and most suave lines of sports cars in the world.

It all started in the late nineteenth century.  Porsche’s dad was a tinsmith, but young Ferdinand had a preference for new-fangled electricity.  He worked for an electric gear manufacturer before planning electric automobiles 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 twenty-five years old Porsche.

Porsche kept developing the Lohner.  Motors in all four centers made it one of the earliest four-wheel drives and a gas engine and generator rather than 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 car there was developed into the sports model that claimed the 1910 Prince Henry Trial.

Cars weren’t the sole mechanical designs of the self-taught car genius.  In 1912 he drew up 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 giant 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 electrical motors in the centers with a 20 liter, 150 hp traction engine providing the power.

In 1917 he was given an honorary doctorate from Vienna Technical University.

Porsche turned to small cars after WWI, coming up with the Sascha, which could hit 89 miles per hour with a miniscule 1100 cc engine.  These autos came 1st and second 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 car, which went on to take the first three places in its class in the 1924 Targa Florio, including 1st place overall.  Porsche was awarded another honorary doctorate, this time from Stuttgart college for his achievements.

At Daimler he designed one of the most renowned cars in history, the seven-liter six-cylinder supercharged Mercedes which progressed thru the K and S series to the SS, SSK and SSKL.  These cars controlled racing in 1928-30.  As well, he worked on diesel engines for lorries and airplane engines.

Daimler merged with Benz in 1926, and the mixed board denied Porsche’s push for small and light Daimler-Benz cars.  Porsche give up and moved to Steyr where he designed a huge expensive car with a 5.3-liter straight-eight.

Steyr fell down in the great depression though, and in 1930 Porsche was unemployed.

At the age of 55, when many folks these days are taking early retirement, Porsche opened his very own design bureau with an elite group of engineers he had formerly worked with, including his very own son Ferdinand’Ferry’ Porsche.

His first job was the Wander W.17, a small 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 fully independent suspension.  It didn’t go into production due to an upswing in Zundapp’s standard market of motorcycles.

In 1932 Russia offered Porsche the job of State Designer.  It was an attractive offer, but he turned it down.

Another tilt at a small car came from NSU.  The Zundapp was dusted of to give the basic concepts, but this time a flat-four air-cooled engine was used at the rear, along with torsion bar suspension and swing axles at the rear.  Three prototypes were built before the project was deserted, but the VW Beetle was getting closer.

Hot racing automobiles were still on the drawing board, with the Porsche team building a genuine monster for Auto-Union.  It had a 4.4 litre supercharged V16 mounted at the back.  With the weight at the rear, swing axles, skinny tires and incredible power, ( it’s reported they could spin the wheels at one hundred mph ) these autos were a handful to drive, but they won races!

Meanwhile, Hitler was also gaining amazing power, and one of his concepts was for a’people’s car’.  Porsche got the job of coming up with it, and all his previous experience went into the best selling car ever, the Volkswagen Beetle.  Three Beetles were turned into lightweight sports coupes for the suggested 1939 Berlin-Rome road race. 

The race never occurred 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 exploited the mixed drive with an internal combustion engine driving hub-mounted electrical motors.

The war ended and the French threw Professor Porsche, son Ferry, and son-in-law Anton Piech in prison as war criminals.  ( Totally baseless ).  Ferry was released after a few months but the Professor was kept with France demanding 1 million Francs for his release. 

Ferry and the design bureau took on new projects to pay the money.  When the Professor was released, the design of the very first Porsche branded sports auto was way under way.  This vehicle was the 356, the start of a line of stimulating thoroughbreds which are some of the most desirable sports automobiles in the world today. 

Ferdinand Porsche may have been a humble start in life but he was an automotive 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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