Porsche

’s Legacy Essay, Research Paper

The Porsche is a legacy of Ferdinand Porsche, and his belief in what an automobile should be. Porsche believed that cars should be the products of engineering innovation, careful development and diligent craftsmanship.

Dr. Ferdinand Porsche was born in 1875 in Bohemia, and early on he devoted his time to mechanical and electric structures. When he was 15, his family was delighted to learn it had the second electrically lighted structure in town, for he had built a generator and everything else he needed, including the bulb, to light their house. This would be just the beginning of what was to come for Ferdinand Porsche.

The first Porsche name created a sensation when it debuted at the Paris Exposition in 1900. Called the Lohner-Porsche, it was a battery-powered two-seater that used electric motors in the front wheel hubs. Ferdinand Porsche designed the hub motors at just 25 years old. Mr. Lohner, an employer of Porsche boasted to the press: “He is very young, but he is a man with a big career before him. You will hear of him again.” This quote is what drove Porsche to create the type of car that he is much acclaimed for.

The first car that Porsche produced was something that he had been working on for a lifetime. With a light chassis and a low center of gravity, the production car had a fundamental purpose, while a racing version, which was capable of 37 mph, was also planned.

In 1906, the Austrian branch of the Daimler Motor Company hired Porsche as its new Technical Director. Porsche designed a number of landmark cars, eventually assuming the position of Chief Engineer at Daimler headquarters in 1923. In 1924, he produced a Mercedes-Benz, which proved its design winning the Targa Florio. (A competitive racing event.)

At Daimler-Benz, Porsche created one of the most exquisite cars of all time; the Mercedes-Benz S-series. People now could speed and be comfortable while racing in a car that was a street-legal racing car. Porsche then created the Mercedes-Benz S, SS and SSK, which were models of the late 1920s. During his stay at Daimler-Benz, Porsche proposed that the

Mercedes-Benz S class should be mass-produced so that people in the bourgeois class could afford a luxury car. The board of directors quickly turned down this idea. Disturbed by this decision, Porsche decided to quit and start his own kind of car company. Unaware where his funds would come from, investors who were interested in his strategy gave him the financial support that he needed. Porsche finally went into business for himself. On March 6th, 1931, Porsche was established in Stuttgart, Germany.

Porsche and his designers began the beginning work on a vehicle that would become the Volkswagen (The people s car). In a series of prototypes created throughout the mid-1930s, it’s easy to see Porsche s philosophy in practice. First it starts with a design concept, and through a process of evolution, prove the engineering of each component. Porsche designed, built and tested 20 different engines before coming back to his starting point, an air-cooled four-stroke flat four. During this time, Porsche designed three aerodynamic coupe versions of the Volkswagen for racing, the Berlin-Rome rally cars. It’s easy to see why they are considered prototypes of the Porsche coupes.

The Porsche firm moved in 1938, to new headquarters in Zuffenhausen, just outside of Stuttgart. When war engulfed Europe, Porsche was involved in the design of a number of projects that included farm tractors, planes, and ship engines.

Never far away from the automotive work of his father, Ferry Porsche was soon behind the wheel of a car and, by the age of twelve, he was even permitted to run in the class winning Targo Florio car, the lightweight Austro-Daimler Sascha. While building a family, his son, Ferdinand jr. (Ferry) was always central to their concept of automobile design. So it was natural that in the postwar years, when Porsche finally had an opportunity to build a car of its own, they built sports cars. That vehicle was the legendary Type 356. Production began in the spring of 1948 in Gmund, Austria, where the Porsche firm had temporarily relocated towards the end of the war. As with every Porsche, you could see that it followed a certain philosophy that could be seen in every car manufactured. The car was light, aerodynamic, responsive, and possessed character. There was an air-cooled engine located behind the driver, but forward of the rear axle. These have been the characteristics that have made Porsche unique and continue to make Porsche the most envied and desirable car on the market.

Joseph Stalin once invited the designer to Russia, just to visit, but in reality to feel him out on the possibility of his becoming the Soviet Union’s minister of technology. There was no racing in Russia, though Stalin and Porsche both liked racing. So Porsche headed back to

Germany and designed the P-wagon of 1932, a car resembling the racers of the 1960s and 1970s. It was a pacesetter that gave the Mercedes Benz entries their best competition.

Porsche himself laid out everything in the Volkswagen, including the Beetle shape, as early as 1931. The car was announced in 1938, when hundreds of orders were taken for the car at $400 per unit. Porsche had a creative lifetime of some 40 years. Unlike most automotive eng