Ferdinand Porsche Biography

Ferdinand Porsche was born on September 3 1875in Mafferdoff town located in Austro-Hungarian province Bohemia (nowadays the territory of Czech Republic). From his early childhood Ferdinand expressed a lively interest to everything related to technics; being 15 he constructed generator and an electric light-bulb, so Porsche’s house became the second in the city lighted with electricity. Obviously such a talent wasn’t left unnoticed, and since Porsche was especially interested in self-propelled carriages his path to automobile industry already started… By the beginning of the century he was employed at a local Austro-Daimler Company, where he got the position of technical director by the age of 34. However his career went really giddy after the end of World War I.
In 1923 Mercedes invited the Austrian engineer for the position of technical director; Porsche accepted their invitation and moved to Stuttgart with his family without any hesitations. For 5 years he was responsible for working out perspective projects of this German company that was renamed to Daimler-Benz at that time, after amalgamating with Daimler Company); such masterpiece as Mercedes-Benz SSK was developed under his direction. Driving a car equipped with a 7-liter SSK motor with automatic fuel injection, making up to 200 km/h, legendary racer Rudolf Caracciola gained many victories on the edge of 30ies.

Ferdinand Porsche was in love with motoring sport and was reckoned that only sport moved technical progress. Once the engineer visited USSR, invited personally by Stalin, and was offered a post of Minister in Soviet government, but he rejected this flattering proposition because in Soviet Union there were no perspectives of developing motoring sport and the engineer would only agree to design tanks along with racing bolides. Another great leader provided him with such an opportunity.

In April 1931 Porsche together with his 22 year old son Ferdinand junior, named simply Ferry, founded an independent Company Dr. Ing. h. c. F Porsche AG, having the following slogan: “We design land, water and air vehicles and provide consulting services in their construction.” The first order they got, a compact motor car with 2-liter engine for Wanderer Company got the index of 007 in order for the clients to assume that wasn’t the first order they got. The order was fulfilled perfectly so another order from Auto Union followed, this time for constructing a racing car lighter than 750 kilograms.

The Auto Union P-wagon car was ahead of its time; the car rather resembled Formula-1 bolides of 60ies-70ies. Light-weight materials were used for constructing its body, including aluminum; 16-cylinder engine with supercharger and unique system for measuring the work of gas-distributing unit was located behind the driver. Ferry dedicated all his spare time to testing the cars until one day his father said to him: “I have enough of good drivers and only one son.”

In 1934 ...