Ferdinand Porsche

Ferdinand Porsche was a Car designer. (Born September 19, 1909, in Wiener Neustadt, Austria; died March 27, 1998, in Zell am See, Austria). Ferdinand Porsche and his father, an early designer for Daimler-Benz, collaborated on designing the Volkswagen Beetle, the most popular car in the world, as well as lightweight racecars. After World War II, Porsche gained control of the business and concentrated on building sports cars for races, as well as automobiles for normal driving situations. The Porsche coupe became a status symbol, aligned with royalty and movie stars. By the 1980s, the fast, expensive cars reached their peak of popularity. Though a 1987 American recession hit hard, by 1996, Porsche's profits were up and new models were coming out of production. The company went public in 1972, but it continued to be plagued by strife, no thanks to family feuds brought on by Porsche's son and nephew. Porsche remained involved in the business until his retirement in 1993.

Ferdinand Anton Ernst "Ferry" Porsche was born in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, near Vienna, to Ferdinand and Aloysia Johanna (Kaes) Porsche. His Czech-born father was a technical director at the Austro-Daimler automobile company, which became Daimler-Benz, manufacturer of the Mercedes-Benz. The elder Porsche had designed the Lohner-Porsche Chaise, powered by four electric motors, in 1900. The year after his son was born, the senior Porsche designed a car that traveled 85 miles per hour. In 1923, the family moved to Stuttgart, Germany, where he took a job with Daimler-Benz as a board member and technical director. The senior Porsche began tinkering in his own workshop as well, and by 1930 opened his own automobile shop building racecars.

"Ferry" Porsche thus grew up with an innate love of cars. In 1920, his father gave him for Christmas a small two-seater that he designed and built. It ran on a 3.5 horsepower, two-cylinder engine. Porsche began helping out in his father's business as soon as it opened; they developed the Auto Union grand prix car, which had a lightweight design and 16-cylinder engine. Porsche liked to test drive this machine, but his father soon nixed his runs, fearing for his safety. At the age of 12, Porsche had witnessed a fatal car crash during a race, and while everyone else shielded their eyes from the carnage, he was engrossed in the wreck—not out of a macabre sense, but to analyze the cause of the tragic accident. Later investigation showed that his original assessment was correct; a tire wheel had collapsed. This scientific curiosity would translate to a successful future in building automobiles.

One of Porsche's greatest claims to fame was his involvement on the prototype Volkswagen ("VW"), meaning "people's car" in German. The first model had its debut run in 1936, and two years later, the first VW plant was built. Porsche's father had been recruited to build the car by German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, who wanted an affordable auto for the working class. In a savvy business move, the younger Porsche made certain that he and his father would receive a portion of the profits for every car sold. Eventually the VW "Beetle," so called for its small size and rounded body style, would become the world's most popular car. Under the Nazi regime, the Porsches' firm flourished as they manufactured military vehicles, airplane engines, and tanks. Later, like most businesspeople who had dealings with the Third Reich, Porsche stated that he had no way to refuse Hitler's wishes. The factory during this time operated with what Porsche would later recall as 15,000 to 20,000 Russian employees, although he did not point out that these were prisoners of war providing slave labor.