Everything about Ferdinand Porsche totally explained
Prof. Dr. Ing h.c.
Ferdinand Porsche (
September 3,
1875 –
January 30,
1951) was an
Austrian automotive engineer. He is best known for his contributions to advanced German tank designs:
Tiger I,
Tiger II and the
Elefant.
Adolf Hitler honored Porsche in 1937 when he was awarded the
German National Prize for Art and Science, one of the rarest decorations in the Third Reich.
Porsche's son,
Ferry Porsche, is the
eponym for
Porsche automobiles, initially based to a large extent on the
Volkswagen (Beetle) design.
Early years
Ferdinand Porsche was born to
German-speaking parents in
Maffersdorf near
Reichenberg in northern
Bohemia, then belonging to
Austria-Hungary (today
Czech Republic).
He showed high aptitude for mechanical work at a very young age. He managed to attend classes at the Imperial Technical School in Reichenberg (
Liberec) at night while helping his father in his mechanical shop by day. Thanks to a referral, Porsche landed a job with the Béla Egger Electrical company in
Vienna when he turned 18. In Vienna he'd sneak into the local university after working whenever he could. Beyond auditing classes there, Porsche had never received any higher engineering education. During his five years with
Béla Egger, Porsche first developed the
electric hub motor.
In 1898, Porsche joined the
Vienna-based factory Jakob Lohner & Co, that produced coaches for Emperor
Franz Joseph I of Austria, as well as for the kings of
Norway,
Sweden, and
Romania. Jakob Lohner had begun construction of automobiles in 1896 under
Ludwig Lohner in the trans-
Danubian suburb of
Floridsdorf.
Their first design, unveiled in 1898, was the "System Lohner-Porsche", a carriage-like car driven by two
electric motors, directly fitted to the front wheels, and powered by batteries.
(External Link
) This drive train construction was easily expanded to
four-wheel drive, by simply mounting two more electric motors to the rear wheels as well, and indeed such a specimen was ordered by the Englishman E. W. Hart in 1900. In December of that year, the car was presented at the
Paris World Exhibition under the name Toujours-Contente. Even though this one-off vehicle
(External Link) had been commissioned for the purposes of racing and record-breaking, the 1,800 kg of
lead acid batteries it required graphically illustrated the limits of this powertrain concept. Although it "showed wonderful speed when it was allowed to sprint", the weight of its huge battery pack meant that it was singularly reluctant to climb hills.
Still employed by Lohner, Porsche reached the logical conclusion and in 1901 introduced the '
Mixte' vehicle/transmission concept: instead of a massive battery-pack, an
internal combustion engine was fitted to a generator to drive the electric
hub motors and (for vehicle reliability) a small battery pack. This way Porsche had created the first
petroleum electric hybrid vehicle on record, although since sufficiently reliable gears and couplings weren't available at the time, he chose to make it a
series-hybrid, an arrangement currently more common in
diesel-electric or
turbo-electric railway locomotives than automobiles.
Although over 300 of the Lohner-Porsche chassis were sold until 1906, most of them were two-wheel drive—either front- or rear-wheel driven trucks, buses and fire-engines. No further four-wheel-drive passenger cars were manufactured, however some buses were fitted with it.
The up to 56 km/h (35 mph) fast carriages broke several Austrian speed records, and also won the Exelberg Rally in 1901 with Porsche himself piloting a front-wheel drive hybrid specimen. It was later upgraded with more powerful engines from
Daimler and
Panhard, which proved to be enough to post more speed records. In 1905, Porsche was recognized with the
Poetting prize as Austria's most outstanding automotive engineer.
In 1902, he was drafted into military service. He served as a chauffeur to
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the crown prince of Austria whose assassination sparked
World War I a mere decade later.
Austro-Daimler
In 1906,
Austro-Daimler recruited Porsche as their chief designer. Porsche's best known Austro-Daimler car was designed for the
Prince Henry Trial in 1910, named after
Wilhelm II's younger brother
Prince Heinrich of Prussia. Examples of this streamlined, 85
horsepower (63 kW) car won the first three places, and the car is still better known by the nickname "Prince Henry" than by its model name "Modell 27/80".
Porsche had advanced to Managing Director by 1916 and received the honorary
doctorate degree, "Dr. techn h.c." from the
Vienna University of Technology in 1917 (hence the "Dr. Ing h.c" in his name, meaning "Doktor Ingenieur Honoris Causa"). Porsche successfully continued to construct racing cars, winning 43 out of 53 races with his 1922 design. In 1923, Porsche left Austro-Daimler after differences ensued about the future direction of car development.
Only a few months later Porsche landed a new job as
Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft's Technical Director in
Stuttgart,
Weimar Germany, which was already then a major hub for the German automotive industry. He received another honorary doctorate from the
Stuttgart Technical University for his work at Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft in Stuttgart and later the honorary title Professor. While at Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, he came up with several very successful race car designs. The heavy series of models equipped with superchargers that later culminated in the
Mercedes-Benz SSK dominated its class of motor racing in the
1920s.
In 1926, Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft and
Benz & Cie merged into
Daimler-Benz, with their joint products beginning to be called,
Mercedes-Benz. Porsche's concept of a small, light-weight Mercedes-Benz car wasn't popular with Daimler-Benz's board, however. He left in 1929 for
Steyr, but the
Great Depression brought about Steyr's economic collapse and Porsche ended up being unemployed.
In April
1931 Porsche founded his consulting firm,
Dr. Ing. h.c. F. Porsche GmbH, Konstruktionen und Beratungen für Motoren und Fahrzeugbau, in Stuttgart, where he returned. Porsche successfully recruited several old co-workers he befriended at his former places of employment including
Karl Rabe,
Erwin Komenda,
Franz Xaver Reimspiess, and his son,
Ferry Porsche. Their first project was the design of a middle class car for
Wanderer. Other commissioned designs followed. As the business grew, Porsche decided to work on his own design as well, which happened to be a reincarnation of the small car concept from his days at Daimler-Benz in Stuttgart. He financed the project with a loan on his life insurance. Later
Zündapp decided to help sponsor the project, but lost interest after their success with motorcycles.
NSU then took over the sponsorship, but also lost interest due to the high tooling costs. After that, no one seemed interested in the project until
Adolf Hitler made it his agenda to motorize the nation and that every German should own either a car or a
tractor in the future.
In June 1934, Porsche received a contract to build three prototypes based on his design. The three cars were completed in winter 1936. The original car design follows the innovative ideas of
Hans Ledwinka, which resulted in a lawsuit by
Tatra, against Porsche and his collaborators; settled by
Volkswagen only several years after the WWII.
Daimler-Benz was contracted to build an additional 30 prototypes. A new city, "Stadt des KdF-Wagens", near
Fallersleben was founded for the factory. The city is named
Wolfsburg today and is still the seat of
Volkswagen.
About the same time, Porsche designed a racing car for
Auto Union to compete with Daimler-Benz in
Grand Prix motor racing from 1934 onwards. The V16-powered car became known by the name
P-Wagen and was both innovative and successful. The dominance of the
Silver Arrows of both brands was only stopped by the outbreak of
World War II in 1939.
Porsche became involved with the construction of the factory in Wolfsburg. He handed over his racing projects to his son, Ferry.
Porsche also accepted further projects from
Nazi Germany, including the design and construction of
panzers and other military vehicles such as the
Tiger Tank and the
Elefant tank destroyer.
Post war
In November 1945 after the war, Porsche was asked to continue the design of the Volkswagen in
France and to move the factory equipment there as part of
war reparations. Differences within the French government and objections from the French automotive industry put a halt to this project before it had even begun. On 15 December 1945, French authorities arrested Porsche,
Anton Piëch, and
Ferry Porsche as
war criminals. While Ferry was set free soon, Ferdinand and Anton were held in a
Dijon prison for 20 months without trial.
While his father was in captivity, Ferry tried to keep the company in business, and they also repaired cars, water pumps, and
winches. A contract with
Piero Dusio was completed for a
Grand Prix motor racing car, the
Type 360 Cisitalia. The innovative 4WD design never went into races, but the money it raised for Porsche was used to redeem Ferdinand Porsche from French prison.
The company also started work on a new design, the
Porsche 356, the first car to carry the Porsche brand. The company was located in
Gmünd in
Carinthia at the time, to which they'd evacuated from Stuttgart to avoid Allied bomb raids. The company started manufacturing the Porsche 356 in an old saw mill in Gmünd. They manufactured 49 cars, which were built entirely by manual labor.
The Porsche family returned to Stuttgart in 1949 not knowing how to restart their business. The banks didn't give credits as the company's plant was still under American embargo and couldn't be taken as security. So Ferry Porsche took one of the limited series 356 models from Gmünd and visited Volkswagen dealers to raise some orders. He asked the dealers to pay for the ordered cars in advance. He even wrote a letter to the bank's director to thank him for refusing.
The serial version made in Stuttgart had a
steel body welded to the central-tube platform chassis instead of the
aluminum body used in the small Gmünd-made series. When Ferry Porsche reanimated the company he thought of series figures of about 1,500 to be produced. More than 78,000 Porsche 356's were manufactured in the following 17 years.
Porsche was later contracted by Volkswagen for additional consulting work and received a
royalty on every Volkswagen Type I (Beetle) car manufactured. This provided Porsche with a comfortable financial situation as more than 20 million Type I were built.
In November 1950, Porsche visited the Wolfsburg Volkswagen factory for the first time since the end of
World War II. Porsche spent his visit chatting with Volkswagen president
Heinrich Nordhoff about the future of
VW Beetle, which were already being produced in large numbers.
A few weeks later, Porsche suffered a
stroke. He didn't fully recover, and died on
January 30 1951.
In 1996, Porsche was inducted into the
International Motorsports Hall of Fame and in 1999 posthumously won the award of
Car Engineer of the Century.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Ferdinand Porsche'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://ferdinand_porsche.totallyexplained.com">Ferdinand Porsche Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
