The History Of The Porsche

Ferdinand Porsche played an important role in thethe 911.
development of airplanes and racing cars, and theThe 911 became easily recognizable: it had attractive
construction of tanks for the Wehrmacht. He is ansloping bonnet and what later became characteristic
automobile engineer with more than a thousand"frog eye" headlights, curves running from the top edge
patents to his name. He was appointed chief engineerof the windscreen to the rear bumper and a straight
at Mercedes-Benz in Stuttgart in the 1920s. Later on,waistline. From a functional and technical point of view
he set up his own engineering workshop and designedit was more like BMW 1500, although it retained the
among others the Volkswagen. At the plant wherestylistic features of the original Porsche. The new 911
Volkswagen was made, Wolfsburg, he was chief ofwill become the foundation stone of Porsche's identity,
operations and at the end of the war he was internedeven though the design was not always appreciated.
by the Allies.During the 1970`s and 1980`s, the designers attempts to
He was released a few years later and starteddistance Porsche from its legendary design brought
building his first car with his son, Ferry Porsche. Thethe company to the edge of disaster. The more
car was named the Porsche 356 and it was a sportsmodern 924 model, "a people's Porsche", developed
car and a reminiscent of the Volkswagen. It had thewith Volkswagen, as well as the 928 were far from
same four-cylinder boxer engine that wasfulfilling the expectations.
rear-mounted, just like the VW. It was far from being aIn the 1990`s, the company realized that what for over
powerful sports car, developing only 40 bhp and atwenty years was perceived as a straitjacket, it was
maximum speed of 87 mph (140 km/h). First producedin fact a market advantage. During the 1990`s, Porsche
as a convertible and later as a hard top it distinguishedbecame highly profitable since they now knew that the
by the very elegant and innovative body. It wastypical Porsche features were timeless. Nearly forty
developed in the workshop of Erwin Komenda, apeople now worked in the design department on
master of restrained streamlining who had been infurther developments of the long-running 911. These
charge of sheet metal and design techniques atdevelopments included the 911 GTI, a powerful
Porsche since the VW Beetle. The new style ofcombination of sports and racing car, put forward by
closed coupe was designed by Komenda and it soonthe in-house designer Anthony R. Hatter. In 1999, chief
became the embodiment of the sports car, thanks todesigner proudly presented the new Boxster which
its fastback.enabled Porshe to establish a second independent
This tradition was continued by Komenda andrange of models.
Ferdinand "Butzi" Porsche, the founder's grandson, with