At the end of WWII, German engineer Ferdinand Porsche, the designer of the VW Beetle that was shown to Hitler in May 1938, and his son Ferry, were prisoners in France. While waiting for their liberation, their closest collaborators opened in Gmünd, a small town in Carinthia, a workshop for repairs and maintenance of the numerous military VWs in circulation in Austria at the time. When the Porches, the son Ferry first and then the father, were released from the French prisons, activities were extended to include the design of a sporty Volkswagen model, equipped with a regular 1131 cc VW engine and featuring a new tubular chassis frame and a new body made from metal panels fashioned by hand. The name of the project, which would subsequently be used to identify the model, was 356.
Ferry and Ferdinand Porsche (father and son) and the 356, in 1948
From the very start (August 1948), the two initial versions, cabriolet and coupé, met with great interest. Orders came in fast and the production rate permitted by the small facilities (5-6 units per month) proved altogether insufficient. Thus, the company moved to Feuerbach (in late 1949) to achieve a small increase in output (8-10 units/month): in the meantime Porsche models began to compete and take wins in various races.
356 1500 Special
The initial model, whose overall shape remained substantially the same during its 17-year production period (1949-1976), was built according to handicraft-like criteria: a single worker assembled an entire engine in ca 25 hours of work and at the end affixed his initials on the crankcase, The same worker would then be called upon to intervene if a failure occurred.
In 1952 they were able to build a new plant in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. A racing department was established with the aim to fine-tune increasingly competitive cars: shortly afterwards (spring 1953), tests on the twin-cam Porsche cabriolet got underway. After a rather prolonged gestation, in 1954 this model began to reap an uninterrupted series of victories, which made it unbeatable in its class. Countless wins were conquered from 1954 to 1960, especially in uphill races and at the Targa Florio (where it won 11 times). The series of wins continued with the victories obtained by other models: the 904, the Carrera Series, the 917 (three-time winner of the World Championship for Makes).
904 GTS 1964
In 1964, sixteen years after the debut of the first 356, Porsche undertook a drastic renewal of its production car range by introducing the 911. Besides a new body, the 911 featured new mechanical parts: it used a 2000 cc SOHC six-cylinder boxer engine, also a forerunner, like the 356, of an extremely fortunate production cycle. With these two models, the 356 and the 911, in just a few years, Porsche rose to the rank of one of the most prestigious players on the international automotive scene and diversified its production line-up, always in keeping with the construction criteria identified by Ferdinand Porsche back in 1933: rear-mounted air-cooled engines with opposed pistons.
911
The first dent in this scheme took place in the mid 1970s, with the debuts of the 924 (1975), the 928 (1977), the 944 (1981) and the 968 (1991), all of them equipped with front-mounted water-cooled engines. Today, the company continues to propose speedsters with top speeds of over 300 km/h, born of the experience acquired on the race tracks, or conceived initially as concept cars and then moved to the production line thanks to the insistence of a determined portfolio of fans willing to pay up to 50 thousand Deutsche Marks to reserve a model, as was the case for the 959 in 1983.
Porsche race cars have always been synonymous with victory: it is believed that the total number of wins reaped in competitions all over the world comes to over 28,000, including the latest win obtained at Le Mans in 2015.
2015 Le Mans victory
The secret of Porsche’s success lies in standard production runs controlled and finished to the limits of perfection and sports activities based on incessant research, organisation and testing processes. The car maker has also tackled the insidious world of F1 racing, both in 1961, with a complete car and in the 1980s, by supplying to McLaren-Tag the engines with which the Prost-Lauda pair won the title and 12 of the 16 world races. Nor was the AWD sector overlooked: in 1984, at its first attempt, the 911 SC/RS took first place in the extremely tough Paris-Dakar rally.
From its participation in the Paris-Dakar, which it entered again in 1985 and 1986, Porsche acquired considerable experience in the area of all-wheel-drive powertrains, which it then transferred successfully to its road models.
Porsche 959, at the 1986 Parigi-Dakar, at the wheel Ickx
At the beginning of the 2000s, Wiedeking, Porsche President from 1993 to 2009, gave free rein to a project for a new dream car, without imposing any design constraint on the engineering team. From this absolute freedom came the Carrera GT, capable of breathtaking performances: 330 km/h, 0-100 in 3.9 seconds. 1500 units were built, and sold for about half a million Euros each. Wiedeking also advocated the wisdom of tackling a sector, Sport Utility cars, seemingly remote from Porsche’s habitual areas of activity. And yet, success was achieved even in this new market segment, as the Cayenne, developed in collaboration with Volkswagen, turned out to be a winning project; the same applies to the Macan (2013). Finally, work started on the Panamera, a four-door sedan whose project got underway and was dropped several times, whether for fear of not succeeding or due to financial considerations. Eventually, though, the obstacles were overcome and the Panamera was unveiled (Shanghai Motor Show, April 2009). On the eve of a severe worldwide economic crisis, which would affect the choices of all major car manufacturers, Porsche was still able to surprise its aficionados once again, with a model capable, as always, of great sports results.
2015 Porsche Cayenne turbo
In August 2012, Volkswagen, present in the company until then with a minority shareholding, acquired the remaining 50,1% of the capital stock of Porsche, with a total expenditure of 4.46 billion Euros. Since then, the Porsche company has been fully owned by Volkswagen, although the history of the Stuttgart-based car maker has been closely tied to Wolfsburg from the very start.
“In the beginning I looked around and could not quite find the car I dreamed of. So I decided to build it myself.” (Prof. Eng. Ferdinand Porsche).
