Ferry Porsche

HE PUT THE PORSCHE NAME ON CARS, AND ON THE MAP

Contents

1. PORSCHE TIMELINE

Professor Dr. Ferdinand Porsche 1909-1998

When 22-year-old Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche joined his father's design consultancy business in 1931, he had large shoes to fill. His father, also named Ferdinand, was by then a well-known engineer and designer.

To this day automotive enthusiasts are grateful for Ferry's ability to not only work alongside his established father, but, in many ways, to surpass his accomplishments by creating a marque that remains the only major independent sports car maker in the world.

On Friday, March 27, Professor Dr. Ferdinand "Ferry" Porsche, 88, died while vacationing in the Austrian resort town of Zell am See.

The 50th anniversary of Porsche AG is being celebrated in 1998 and is correctly the 50th year of sports cars that bear the Porsche name. The company of Dr. Ing. h.c.F Porsche KG, however, was formed by Ferry's father, Ferdinand, on April 25, 1931; it was Ferry, the son, who conceived and created the first sports car named "Porsche," the Type 356, and began production in Gmund, Austria in June 1948.

Before there was a Porsche car, there was a Porsche company. Started by his father as "designers and consultants for land, sea and air vehicles," Porsche was well-known for its involvement in vehicle manufacture. It was the elder Porsche who penned the original people's car, and it was Ferry who headed the testing program for the Volkswagen Beetle.

Giving due credit to his inventive father, it was Ferry Porsche who envisioned taking the postwar company to the position it enjoys today as a mass-market builder of some of the best performance sports cars on the market.

Porsche didn't wake one morning and create the Type 356. He was nurtured on performance cars. Among the projects to which young Ferry was assigned at the design firm were the 1930s Auto Union grand prix cars. And Ferry's passion did not remain behind the drafting table; he partially fulfilled another of his dreams of being a race driver as test pilot of those legendary-and notoriously difficult to drive-Auto Unions of 1934-39. These were mid-engined racers with 12-or even 16-cylinder engines, pumping as much as 525 hp through the skinny tires of the time. These thoroughbreds demanded the expertise of Tazio Nuvolari, Hans Stuck and Bernd Rosemeyer to keep them on the track in competition. By all accounts, Ferry Porsche was up to the task of testing their limits.

Understandably, though, considering the high mortality rate for race drivers of the era, his father told Ferry to stick to the T-square instead of the steering wheel.

"My father was not keen on my racing," Ferry explained in 1984. "He used to say he had many drivers...but only one son."

In 1940, with WWII well under way, Ferry stepped in as deputy director of the engineering consultancy that was deeply engaged in war work for the Nazis (his father being immersed in the VW program under Hitler's direction). From an immediate postwar Germany that was empty of resources, Ferry brought a small team of Porsche loyalists and re-established the firm in Gmund, Austria, in 1945.

In addition to his WWII effort, the elder Porsche had also contributed to the German effort in WWI and enjoyed the technical challenge of designing war equipment. He was incarcerated in France for his role supporting the Third Reich; however, the French had also hoped to influence him to contribute to the development of the postwar French auto industry, just as other countries employed captured German engineers in their weapons and space programs.

In 1947, Ferry paid a one-million franc "bail" (using proceeds from a contract to design the groundbreaking mid-engined 4wd Cisitalia grand prix car) so that France would release his father from custody. The elder Porsche, whose health had suffered while he was imprisoned, died in January 1951 at age 75, leaving the firm to his family, namely Ferry and his sister Louise.

Still, his father had lived long enough to see the first sports car bearing the family name go into full production in 1950.

"Originally I only wanted to build an automobile which had been in my mind for a long time," Ferry Porsche said during an interview marking his 80th birthday celebration in 1989. He remembered that he conceived of the car as a lightweight sports car suited for the racetrack. "We naturally hoped that this automobile would please others as well, so that we might sell a few of them. But I never expected it to be so many."