Ferdinand Porsche was born in 1875 in Maffersdorf, in Bohemia, then part of Austria-Hungary. With almost no formal training, he designed an electric car with motors in its wheel hubs for the Paris Exposition of 1900, and soon after a petrol-electric hybrid. He went on to lead engineering at Austro-Daimler and Daimler, where he was responsible for the great Mercedes sports cars of the 1920s.
In 1931 he opened his own design office in Stuttgart. It produced the Auto Union racing cars, with their engines mounted behind the driver, which dominated Grand Prix racing with Mercedes in the 1930s. The Type 52 in this catalogue revives a road-going sports car his office designed on the same basis.
His office also designed the Volkswagen — the car the Nazi government wanted for the people. Porsche joined the Nazi Party and accepted an honorary SS rank; during the war the Volkswagen works he ran built military vehicles using forced labour, and he designed tanks for the German army.
After the war he was held in French custody for around twenty months. While he was imprisoned, his son Ferry designed the first car to carry the family name, the 356, which appeared in 1948 and is also in this catalogue.
Ferdinand Porsche died in 1951. The company that bears his name became one of the most successful sports-car makers in the world; its founder’s record remains, rightly, part of its history.
Foto: Wikimedia Commons · Wikipedia
What he built
Cars in the catalog that carry his work — or his name.
