PORSCHE: A LEGACY OF DESIGN EXCELLENCEA FAMILY AFFAIR FOR NEARLY A CENTURY
The Porsche story has many possible beginnings. One point at which to begin might be in 1950, with the introduction of the Porsche 356 to the United States by its first importer, the famous Max Hoffman. Another beginning might be in 1948, the year in which the first automobile to bear the name Porsche was introduced. But to understand Porsche's heritage its philosophy, and the philosophy of those who serve the company, the story best begins at the home of a tinsmith in the Bohemian village of Haffersdorf. There, in September, 1875, a son was born; his name was Ferdinand Porsche.
The young Ferdinand Porsche gave every evidence of technical genius: he wired his family's home for electricity in 1893, at the age of 18. But he showed few signs of the disciplined engineering skills that were later to become his trademark. His only formal technical training was as a part-time engineering student in Vienna; the "Doctor" appended to his name is in essence honorary.
By the age of 25, the young Ferdinand Porsche had entered the field of automotive design, and thus embarked on an odyssey of innovation that dwarfs that of any other automotive designer. Already, his first car design had been accepted by Jacob Lohner & Co. of Vienna. Over the next 20 years, the temperamental brilliant engineer became associated with every major automobile manufacturer in Germany, while simultaneously designing a dozen of the most technically significant cars in history.
At Mercedes-Benz, he helped develop the SSK series, the most revered Mercedes-Benz cars of all time. He designed Auto Union Wanderer and the Type 32, a precursor of the Volkswagen Beetle, for NSU (all Porsche projects carried a "Type" number; the Wander was the Type 7 and the Beetle would become the Type 60).
Dismissed from Mercedes for disagreeing with the firm's staid engineering policies, Porsche established his own engineering consulting firm, the corporate predecessor to today's Porsche A.G. 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." Among the employees was the Doctor's youthful son, Ferry, whose primary interest was one that any young man might select: sports and racing cars.
The senior Dr. Porsche and his consulting firm were kept busy, and the historic designs streamed off the drawing boards. For Steyr (now the utility-vehicle wing of the Steyr- Daimler-Puch combine), the firm developed the Austria luxury sedan, but it did not progress beyond the prototype stage. For Auto Union (now Audi), the company developed the Front, the world's first front-drive economy car and the astounding Auto Union mid-engine Grand Prix cars, with their supercharged V-12 and V-16 engines which, together with Mercedes- Benz racers, dominated European auto racing for nearly a decade.
For NSU and Zundapp (both became significant motorcycle manufacturers following World War II), the Porsche firm created its best-known designs: a pair of prototypes of an economy car characterized by Dr. Porsche's patented torsion-bar suspension and a rear-mounted engine. When neither company moved rapidly enough to manufacture the designs, he sold the concept to the German government and oversaw a 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.
THE FIRST PORSCHES
Like most German engineering firms, the Porsche firm became enmeshed in World War II, serving the munitions industry until 1945, and all the while being progressively dispersed to escape the Allied strategic bombing activity. The war's end, in April, 1945, found the core engineering staff headquartered in a sawmill in the small town of Gmund on the German-Austrian border. The staff used woodstoves for heat and subsisted by repairing war-era VWs , but it nonetheless cranked out tractor and other utilitarian designs.
In 1948, the Porsche firm as we know it came into existence at Gmund, with the youthful Ferry Porsche acting in his father's absence (the elder Porsche had been interned by the French) to create a sports roadster, the original 356/001. The 356 models of 1948 and 1949 demonstrated nothing if not ingenuity in the face of hardship. In shattered postwar Europe, even spark plugs were hard to obtain. Light alloy metals, machine tools, and other essentials necessary to automobile manufacturing were extremely rare. Consequently, the first Porsches used the VW Beetle chassis almost without modification. Even so, the engineering genius of the firm revealed itself in many subtle details of the design: the hand-formed aluminum body had deceptively low drag and lift coefficients; the chassis reflected a careful tuning of suspension components, and the VW engine had been modified with dual carburetors and a raised compression ratio to give the car excellent power-to-weight qualities. Not the least of the 356's achievement was the generation of sufficient funds to ransom Dr. Ferdinand Porsche from the French.
By 1950, the Porsche firm had moved to Stuttgart and full-scale production had begun, with steel bodies, hand-built interiors, and a Porsche-built Flat-4 engine. Porsche's reputation for engineering innovation and superb construction quality soon became widespread among automotive connoisseurs. The German-built 356 appeared at the 1950 Auto Show, surrounded by company banners proclaiming 50 years of Porsche automotive design work.
The Type 356 demonstrated another characteristic of the Porsche design approach: it endured. Offered for 16 years as a coupe, roadster, stripped-down Speedster, and in quasi-race variants such as the mid-engined 550 Spyder, the 356 series established the Porsche name as a benchmark builder of sports cars as well as a world-class competitor in both endurance racing and rallying.
The 356 series were the first Porsches to establish the marque as a perennial feature at Le Mans, making regular appearances in the 24 Hours of Le Mans class-winner lists. Racing variants of the 356 won both the gruelling Carrera Panamericana long-distance rally and the Targa Florio endurance race, victories that yielded the now-traditional Porsche model names, Targa and Carrera.
Probably no automobile has electrified the Frankfurt Auto Show as thoroughly as did the original 911 prototype (shown as the 901) in 1963. By the standards of the day, its styling, done by Ferdinand "Butzi" Porsche, III, as avant garde in the extreme, its 130-hp Flat-6 overhead cam, engine a jewel of mechanical design. Its cockpit, fitted with a five-nacelle instrument cluster, seemed in that era more characteristic of an aircraft than an automobile. Like the 914, 924, and 928 to come later, it met with praise for its innovation from the press and public, but initial resistance from Porsche traditionalists. It became, of course, Porsche's most enduring automobile, now more than three decades in production, and its gracefully refine exterior continues to evolve and continues to occupy the status of a classic.
The 911 introduced the boxer Flat 6, called one of the ten best engine designs in history by Car and Driver, and this combination became the platform from which Porsche would establish its domination of international endurance racing. By the late 1960s, Porsche competition cars such as the RSR and RSK, and full-race variants with six- and eight-cylinder engines, were in firm control of the endurance arena. The basic boxer design, with its dry sump lubrication system firmly supported crankshaft, and high power-to-weight ratio, was an ideal design for both high output and unparalleled stamina.
THE RACING PORSCHES
The ultimate representation of Porsche's competition capabilities assuredly was the 917 series of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Originally designed for endurance racing, the 917s were also prepared for racing in the U.S. Can-Am series. Their 12-cylinder boxer engines delivered more than 1000 hp in full turbocharged racing trim, making the 917-30KR one of the most powerful racing cars of all time, supercars in the tradition of Ferdinand Porsche's Auto Unions of the 1930s.
Another Porsche design from the early 1970s explored not the limits of ultimate performance but the boundaries of performance per dollar. This was the mid-engine 914, product of a collaboration between Porsche and Volkswagen. This car established Porsche's ability to design world-class automobiles within the strictures of a modest final cost. Most 914s were four-cylinders, but a six-cylinder version, the 914/6 was also marketed.
A landmark Porsche derived from the 917 racing program's turbocharging technology was the 930, introduced in 1974. This car, the first contemporary turbocharged street car, had a high-output boxer engine, superb chassis refinements, and breathtaking performance. It defined standards for roadgoing performance that survive until today.
In 1976, Porsche took another historic step, introducing its first front-engine, water-cooled automobile, the 924. This was followed rapidly by the marvelously styled 928. Both cars were members of what has become known as the Transaxle Series, in that they used a rear-mounted transaxle to achieve the high polar moment of inertia and predictable handling that are Porsche trademarks.
The definition of a classic can be summed up by the word survival. Porsches survive. The 911 design, first seen some 32 years ago, has continuously evolved and thus remains modern while at the same time instantly evoking memories of the original. The 928, now the 928GTS, is not changed materially from the car introduced in 1978.
Detroiters have already seen a preview of the next Porsche: the retro-styled Boxster, aimed at recalling such early Porsches as the 550. The Boxster appeared two years ago at the North American International Auto Show, and played to raves from enthusiasts.
Eyes on Classic Design salutes Porsche, the marque and the family, for nearly a century of outstanding, often unique, and surely lasting contributions to automotive engineering and design.
