Ferry Porsche - 'Car Engineer of the Century'

Of the dozen or so automotive brands bearing the name of the founder, one may immediately think of Ford, Ferrari and Daimler as being the creations of entrepreneurial genii, and you would be right. But, one name will forever be first on the lips of sports car enthusiasts the world over, and that name is 'Porsche'.

Porsche (pronounced PORSH-er, and never PORSH) is an automotive industry legend and a motoring icon. The man behind the success of the marque was Ferdinand ('Ferry') Porsche, the son of an Austrian automotive engineer who worked for the Austro-Daimler Company and later for the Daimler-Benz Company in Stuttgart, Germany.

As a small boy, Ferry's preference to playing with toys was to spend his time watching and helping in his father's car factory as an unofficial, and unpaid, very junior apprentice! Those formative years generated in Ferry an insatiable interest in cars that would take several years yet to satisfy. After completing his formal education, Ferry joined his father, Ferdinand Porsche, in l931, in the development office of his new company. Their first contract was to design a new 2-litre car for the Wanderer Company. Their success in this initial project brought them a major assignment from the mighty Auto Union Grand Prix racing team organisation to design a new racing car to meet the recently imposed 750-kg maximum weight formula.

Ferry played a large role in the design of the new Auto Union GP car, which was fitted with a lightweight, supercharged 16-cylinder engine mounted amidships behind the driver. This placement of the engine, although standard in modern F1 cars, was revolutionary at the time. The exceptional balance Ferry and his engineering colleagues were able to achieve because of it was a major contributing factor to the race wins of Auto Union in the Thirties in their major circuit battles with Alfa-Romeo, Mercedes and others.

Always keen to experience things for himself, Ferry did much of the test-driving on the Auto Union project until one day his father, Ferdinand Sr, asked him to quit testing. "Your calling is automotive engineering and you are good at it," said his father. "So stick with it. I have more than enough drivers, but I only have one son!"

Like many other German automotive industry companies, World War II was a crippling period as production was switched to military vehicles and factories were devastated by Allied bombing raids in the final years of the war.

The Porsche suffered like others, and moved out of war-torn Stuttgart back to Gmund in Austria, where Ferry and a few colleagues started all over again.

A new beginning
Ferry had been working on a design project in 1939 for a light compact car based on Volkswagen parts and components as they were the only ones available at the time. For his new sports car project, he dusted off the drawings and added speedy acceleration, improved road holding and high level braking to the draft specification. It was also Ferry's intention that this new sports car could be driven easily in town, for pottering around in, as well as for high-performance driving on the autobahns or on the racing circuits. In fact, that premise holds true even today for all Porsche models.

On June 8, 1948, the first sports car to proudly bear the name 'Porsche' was launched as the Type 356. It had a tubular space frame chassis, an aluminium body, and a rear mounted

4-cylinder 1,130-cc Volkswagen engine. The first production model was painted silver – the racing colour of Germany on the circuits of the world.

Only 52 of the Type 356 were built in Gmund before the company moved back to Stuttgart in 1950 where production started anew. The move also allowed Ferry to start designing Porsche's own engines rather than having to source power units from outside. The Type 356 remained in production until 1965 with over 78,000 units sold. This long model life is typical of Porsche's marketing strategy, and even today, the 911 model has been in production for 36 years.

As the new company moved forward, it was approved internationally as a 'specialist sports car manufacturer' and to some extent that influenced Ferry to compete his cars in the world-famous Le Mans 24-hour race in France. The year 1951 saw Porsche's first entry in the race, and it was also the first of many wins – since 1970, Porsche has won Le Mans no less than a record 16 times. A 4WD 959 Porsche won the Paris-Dakar race in 1986 and became the first sports car to win the desert race.

The Porsche family withdrew active management of the company in 1972, the year the new Weissach facility just west of Stuttgart was opened, but Ferry Porsche remained as Honorary Chairman until his death in 1998. He was short in stature, but had a large heart full of determination that

matched his vision and foresight for development and marketing of specialist sports cars for enthusiasts. Although essentially an engineer by training and inclination, the very fact that Porsche remains a totally independent company in today's era of mergers and takeovers is a testimonial to his business acumen and skills.

Always a quiet and humble man, Ferry Porsche was posthumously honoured at the 'Car of the Century' Awards Ceremony in Las Vegas, late last year. Dr Professor Ferdinand Anton Ernst Porsche was nominated and honoured 'Car Engineer of the Century'.

At the same awards ceremony in Las Vegas, the Porsche 911 was nominated the 'Car of the Century'. Sad, indeed, that the legendary Ferry Porsche was not there to receive the honours. But the legacy goes on...!