Ferdinand Porsche was born September 3, 1875 in Maffersdorf, Bohemia, part of the Austrian Empire. Today the town is Liberec in the Czech Republic. Ferdinand was the eldest surviving son of Anton Porsche, a tin smith. Ferdinand was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, but an affinity for electricity resulted in a preoccupation that angered Anton.
The anger was further exacerbated when Anton burned his foot on a battery that Ferdinand was using. Ferdinand’s mother supported his efforts, and at the age of 16, the Porsche home was the only private residence in town with electric lights.
At the age of 18 Ferdinand went to Vienna to pursue his education. Later he joined the electric company, Bela Egger, where he developed an electric hub motor. When the Lohner coach company, coach builder for the aristocracy, could not secure the gasoline engine they wanted for their coach, they turned to Ferdinand and his electric hub motors. The Lohner- Porsche became a reality in 1898 and was shown at the Paris Automobile show in 1900.
The original coach was front wheel drive with a huge battery. The Mixte followed which was 4-wheel drive with a small engine to run a generator along with smaller batteries, truly the first hybrid.
The test track for new vehicles in Vienna was Bergge Strasse, Hill Street. Sigmund Freud’s office was at the base of the hill, where vehicles would gun their engines to make the climb. Patients on the couch must have been startled by the loud noises.
Ferdinand was an enthusiast. He soon took up racing and the development of racing vehicles. His priorities became aerodynamic styling, power to weight ratios, vehicle balance, and continuous improvement of the product. Amazingly these are still Porsche principles.
Ferdinand was such an enthusiast that he missed Ferry’s birth because he was out racing. It was a time when there were no textbooks to teach automotive principles. Ferdinand had to invent his own solutions. His greatest assets were also his greatest liabilities. Ferdinand would do so much research and development work that in a few years, a company could live off his work for the next ten years.
The accountants frowned on the money that went into research and development, not back into profits. While Ferdinand was a genius with his inventions and innovations, he quickly made current products yesterday’s news. One joke was that his cars had a life cycle of four months. Just wait four months and the current car will be obsolete.
Ferdinand had two passions. The first was developing racing cars. The second was developing an economical small car. When Adolf Hitler said only Mercedes could develop a racing car to represent Germany, Ferdinand was maybe the only person who ever told Adolf he was wrong and got away with it.
Ferdinand was given the same funding as Mercedes and developed the Silver Arrows for Audi. These cars were not only innovative; they won on a regular basis. Later, when Hitler wanted a “People’s Car,” Ferdinand was named to develop the VW, a project he had been working on for some time. Ferdinand had proposed a small efficient car to the companies he worked for but failed to convince them to build it.
Ferdinand contributed to both war efforts as an engineer, developing some hugely impressive hardware. Luckily, he remained non-political, never joining the Nazi party, and was cleared of any war crime charges after WW II. Unfortunately, this did not deter the French from imprisoning Ferdinand, Ferry, and Anton Piech (Ferdinand’s son-in-law).
Ferry was released and returned to Gmund, Austria to raise the bail (ransom) money for his father. An Italian count employed Porsche to build a Grand Prix car. This car was the Cisitalia (Type 360). It incorporated amazing technology: a flat 12-cylinder, 1.5-liter engine, with supercharging, side mounted fuel tanks, and four-wheel drive.
Ferdinand was released and returned to Austria. Even though Ferdinand had again been found innocent of war crimes, the French never returned the posted bond. Ferdinand examined project number 356, the first car to bear the Porsche name. He then told his son, Ferry, it was exactly the way he would have done it.
Prison life had been hard on Ferdinand who died in 1951, not long after his return.