Ferdinand Piëch (1937 – 2019) Named car executive of the century in 1999, Ferdinand Piëch transformed Volkswagen into the world’s largest carmaker by revenue. Piëch was the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche. Piëch did everything from leading motor racing operations at Porsche during the 1960s, to turning Audi into a true luxury automotive leader, and then reviving VW in the 1990s and 2000s, turning it into...
Porsche History
We take a look at the important Porsche figures, historical moments and epic road automobiles and racecars.
Quick Links: The Key People / Porsche Glossary / Yesteryear Moments / The Crest & Brand / The People
Ultimate Porsche History Hub
From its inception, the Porsche brand name was one associated with luxury and racecars, a tradition that has stood the test of time over the ages. The founder, Ferdinand Porsche, was once the chief engineer at Mercedes-Benz, and he even spent time working on Volkswagen vehicles. Porsche began his own company in 1931, naming the company after himself when it was incorporated. After that, Porsche began producing vehicles that would go on to become legendary for their performance and quality.
The very first Porsche nameplate was designed based on the same platform as the VW Beetle. Named the ‘Porsche 64’ and released in 1938, the model’s unique design and upscale vibe immediately caught on with buyers. Of course, the company’s growth was impeded when the war began, forcing Porsche to develop tanks instead of automobiles. However, the company bounced back as early as 1947, when the Grand Prix racing car made its debut. Shortly after, in ‘48, Ferdinand’s son Ferry Porsche created the company’s first-ever sports car – the 356.
By the 60s, the Porsche family was designing and producing popular sports cars that debuted with much anticipation at the Frankfurt International Auto Show every year. Then, in 1964, a legend was born when the first-ever Porsche 911 made its first splash in the industry. Over the next few decades, Porsche continued to expand and innovate in its lineup, until the Porsche 911 Turbo released in 1995 was the first vehicle to ever have onboard computer diagnosis, something that would revolutionize the auto service industry.
Still to this day, Porsche has maintained its status in the industry as a producer of unparalleled supercars and racing innovations. While it has many nameplates besides just the Porsche 911, the 911 is perhaps the most iconic and versatile model under the brand’s name, with over twenty-one different models and seven trim levels.
Porsche History - The Key People
The people who shaped Porsche
Ferry Porsche 1909 – 1998 Born on September 19, 1909, of Austrian descent, Ferry Porsche kept the Porsche flame alive when his father was imprisoned in France. Ferry Porsche was one of the first employees to work in his father’s design engineering office, but it is his mark on the company while his father was away that made a huge difference. His realization of a...
Ferdinand Porsche (1875 – 1951) Ferdinand Porsche was an Austrian-German automotive engineer and founder of the Porsche car company. He is best known for creating the first gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle, the Volkswagen Beetle, the Auto Union racing car, the Mercedes-Benz SS/SSK and several other important automobiles and technologies. Most importantly though, for fans of the best sports cars in the world, Ferdinand Porsche is the...
F.A. “Butzi” Porsche (1935 – 2012) Better known to Porsche enthusiasts as F.A. “Butzi” Porsche, he was the son of Dr.-Ing. Ferdinand “Ferry” and Dorothea Porsche, and grandson of Professor Ferdinand and Aloisia Porsche. While heading up the styling department at Porsche, he played a pivotal role in the design of the 904, the iconic 911, and the 914. He went on to establish Porsche...
Glossary of Porsche Related Terms
Making sense of all the fun Porsche names, terms and abbreviations
Yesteryear & Historical Porsche Moments
The mythology of Porsche goes beyond just the people. Conversations, profiles, the cars and moments.
Background The Porsche 917, unveiled in 1969, stands as a testament to Porsche’s commitment to innovation and their quest to conquer the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Its debut at Le Mans in 1969 revealed its formidable speed and reliability, yet aerodynamic issues resulted in high-speed instability. After major changes, mostly in its tail design, the 917 would deliver Porsche their first overall victory in...
Norbert Singer, 24 Hours of Le Mans, 1996 Norbert Singer must rank as one of the most successful race engineers in Porsche’s long and glittering motorsport history. Porsche Road & Race spoke to him about his four-decade career with Porsche, the race cars he helped develop and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. “It’s been a long journey,” Norbert Singer said with a smile, and...
People usually recall the Chevrolet Corvair as the car that was “unsafe at any speed” which is rather unfair because the Corvair itself occupied barely a chapter in Ralph Nader’s infamous book. Indeed, amongst others, the VW Beetle also received a pasting—and Mr. Nader thought the VW Microbus was too dangerous to be on the road. The real interest of the Corvair, though, is how...
Peter Falk sits on the sill of the famous #23 Porsche 917 KH Coupé, winner of the 1970 Le Mans 24 Hours. On this occasion it is located in the Porsche Museum Workshop on 28 June 2010 In a 34-year career at Porsche, the influence of Peter Falk – Porsche’s enduring engineer, can be found throughout the air-cooled and transaxle model ranges, and extends even...
Daytona 24 Hours, 4-5 February 1989: The #86 Porsche 962 of Klaus Ludwig, James Weaver and Sarel van der Merwe, makes its way along the Daytona banking I was really looking forward to the 1989 Daytona 24 Hour race. I had been working as a weekend warrior for Bruce Leven’s Bayside team since early 1987. The team had enjoyed successful seasons in 1987 and 1988,...
Official Daytona ’85 poster By 1981 at the earliest, and for sure by the 1983 season of sports car racing, it had become clear to most that the Porsche 935 was reaching the end of its useful racing life. While it had been a great car, it just could not compete with the new ground effects prototype designs from Lola, March and subsequently Porsche’s own...
Autograph card signed by Jürgen Barth (ca. 1980) More books have been written about Porsche than any other car company so the publication in English of another tome is hardly headline news until you realise that the author, exceptionally, is a Porsche insider, but not just any insider. Jürgen Barth was at the epicentre of Porsche’s racing activity from the time he joined the Zuffenhausen...
1997 Porsche 911 GT1-109 photographed in June 2016 Porsche 993 GT1 chassis #109 was one of just nine customer racing Porsche 911 GT1s built between 1996 and 1998. The 911 GT1 became the Grand Touring Meister when it triumphed in the 1998 Le Mans 24 Hours, but its route to success was not an easy one and at one point, the whole GT1 project looked...
1969 PORSCHE 911 T/R Being offered at Gooding & Company’s Amelia Island Auction is this very rare 1969 PORSCHE 911 T/R, Chassis 119100215, full of history. This is a remarkable Porsche 911 – a factory-built T/R that competed for over 15 years at the highest levels of North American sports car racing. During its extraordinary career, this car was entered in numerous IMSA and SCCA...
No matter who you are or where you’re from, there are three things that connect everyone that is reading this opening line of this article. The first is that we are all enthusiasts of mechanical things with wheels, be them quad bikes, motorcycles, cars, or any variation thereof. Secondly, we are all able to share that enthusiasm with each other, be it through debating the...
Ferry Porsche 1909 – 1998 Born on September 19, 1909, of Austrian descent, Ferry Porsche kept the Porsche flame alive when his father was imprisoned in France. Ferry Porsche was one of the first employees to work in his father’s design engineering office, but it is his mark on the company while his father was away that made a huge difference. His realization of a...
The 24 Hours of Le Mans. Even just the name evokes memories of classic races, unbelievable tragedy, and some of the fiercest battles ever fought over an 8.5 mile (13.6 KM) stretch of road known as “le Circuit de la Sarthe.” These hallowed grounds are where Porsche ultimately proved their expertise in making race cars, with several legendary drives, victories, moments of glory, and, in...
1976 Porsche 924 Coupé It is a fact that most of us with an interest in roadgoing or race cars, will have a favourite model that holds a special place in our memory for some reason. That reason might be something significant that happened in your life where a certain car left an indelible mark in your memory, or might just be slow warming to...
Le Mans 24 Hour, 6/7 June 1998: Allan McNish, Stephane Ortelli and Laurent Aiello took the works #26 Porsche 911 GT1 to victory in the 1998 Le Mans 24 Hours This year, 2018, Porsche will celebrate its 70th anniversary. Although the official date for the registration of the first car, 356-001, is on 8 June, Porsche Road & Race will be bringing you a snapshot into...
Mont Ventoux, 18 June 1967 – Rolf Stommelen won this hillclimb driving a Porsche 910/8 Bergspyder Rolf Stommelen was one of Germany’s leading racing drivers for over a decade and if as the title (above) of his biography implies, he could drive anything anywhere, this was largely true. Although his Formula 1 career with mediocre teams was patchy, in production cars he was reliably top...
Porsche, as we all know, is a name that is synonymous with clean, simple lines that highlight the peak of German engineering. Even from a mile away, you could pick out a 911 from a Cayman from a Taycan, each very similar in design language but completely different in shape and final product. However, if you look back to the 1970s through to the 1990s,...
Porsche dealers can now compete in one of three categories: Preservation, Restoration, or Individualization, putting the emphasis on creativity, the Classic community is growing and thriving in Porsche’s 75th year and as part of the festivities, the Porsche Classic Restoration Challenge is inviting U.S. Porsche dealerships to prove their classic chops by returning a favorite model from the 1950s to the 2000s to its former...
1973 Vasek Polak Porsche 917/10-018 Cam-Am Spyder driven by Jody Scheckter Jody Scheckter was born in East London on the east coast of South Africa, a sleepy seaside town that actually carried the honour of being the country’s motorsport centre up until the early 1960s. In 1973, Scheckter, by then a 23-year old fast-climbing motorsport star, had moved ‘overseas’ and had been criss-crossing the Atlantic...
Daytona 24 Hours, 3-4 February 1973: The start 1973 Daytona 24 hours led by John Watson in the Mirage on pole 1973 saw a return to normality for the Daytona 24-hour race. The distance was set back at 24 hours, after running only a 6-hour length in 1972. Ferrari in 1972 had petitioned the FIA to keep races at 6-hours, as the reliability of the...
Icons of Porsche – Taken seriously! Icons of Porsche is not just the theme for Rennsport Reunion 7, but represents the talented people who have pushed the limits, taken risks and bravely driven Porsche to success over the past 75 years as a sports car marque. Porsche Cars North America (PCNA) is proud to announce that two icons whose passion and determination positively influenced the...
Tools of the trade Metal blades and scrapers, delicate wire loops, wooden sculpting tools, and brushes – this suitcase contains over a hundred instruments. But what they’re used for is not immediately clear. They’re the tools of a modeler, at the exterior studio of Style Porsche, who is responsible for producing clay models of future sports cars– one of the first steps on the path...
The #8 Kremer K3 Porsche 935 entered by Dick Barbour and driven by John Fitzpatrick, in the pit lane ahead of the 1980 Norisring race. The author, Martin Raffauf, is at the car’s right front wheel The Race for the Pork Cutlets… The end of June 1980 was a busy time at Dick Barbour Racing. We had just run at Le Mans with two Porsche...
Fourteen years before the Cayenne was introduced, Ferry Porsche made a statement that seemed to have foretold of the Cayenne, saying, “If we build an off-road model according to our standards of quality, and it has a Porsche crest on the front, people will buy it.” The Cayenne, since its introduction in 2002, has been one of the major pulls to Porsche’s consistent global success....
1961 Porsche 718 W-RS Spyder ‘Grossmutter’ (chassis #047) photographed at the Porsche Museum, May 2019 The word unique is a much-overused word today, as it is applied, it seems, to just about anything that is produced in small numbers, or even just to enhance a claim about something unusual. In fact, the word unique should really only be applied to something when it is: the...
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Porsche Logo & Crest – Guide
Gmünd, Carinthia, Austria
Porsche People Profiles
Porsche has a rich history of amazing personalities, whether it be designers, managers, engineers or race car drivers.
Except perhaps at one or two retirement parties or other formal occasions, no one ever saw Roland Kussmaul wearing a suit and tie. Racing or workshop overalls, Porsche’s pit lane...
Follmer was born in Phoenix in 1934, though effectively he became a Californian as his family moved to Pasadena before he was two years old and it was in this...
British GP meeting which Nick Faure led outright, starting from the second row, against the Falcons and BGG Escorts. But the fan belt came off due to a rag left...
Obviously these two attractive models from the lingerie manufacturer Triumph (München) like this Porsche 914/6 – Rutesheim Athletics Club, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (1969) Very different from previous production Porsches, the 914...
Arno Bohn at Weissach with the 968 Cabriolet (1991) Arno Bohn was managing director of Porsche from 1990-92. An outsider who came from the computer industry, he arrived at a...
Sir Stirling sits back and relaxes at the 2013 Goodwood Festival of Speed after being interviewed by the author It was with great sadness that we learned of the passing...
Richard Attwood relaxing between stints in the Drivers’ Paddock during the 2013 Goodwood Festival of Speed On 4 April this year, Richard Attwood will celebrate his 80th birthday, but speaking...
A huge banner adorns the side of this high bay warehouse in Werk 2, announcing the 25th anniversary exhibition of Exclusive from 1st March to 1st May 2011 Rolf Sprenger...
Toine Hezemans in his Brussels home, 2015 One of the Netherlands’ most successful racers, Toine Hezemans is part of a motorsport dynasty that began with his father who raced Porsches...
Norbert Singer, 24 Hours of Le Mans, 1996 Norbert Singer must rank as one of the most successful race engineers in Porsche’s long and glittering motorsport history. Porsche Road &...
Ernst Fuhrmann at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, 12 June 1977 Porsche’s first CEO is frequently maligned as the man who tried to kill off the 911. There is...
Anatole Lapine, 1973 Anatole Lapine who was in charge of styling at Porsche under two disparate CEOs, Fuhrmann and Schutz, looks back on quite a CV: Chevrolet Corvette, Opel GT,...
Rallye Paris-Dakar 1984: Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2 4×4 (Type 953) – driven by (from L-R) #175 Jacky Ickx, #176 René Metge, #177 Roland Kussmaul For many years, the éminence grise...
Hans Herrmann at the Retro Classics in Stuttgart, Germany 2010 Hans Herrmann, one of the most successful and popular racing drivers to join the Porsche AG works team, celebrates his...
Tilman Brodbeck poses with a 1973 911 Carrera RS 2.7 Coupé (left) and a 911 Sport Classic (right) – 21 September 2009 To be able to write on your résumé...
Mark Webber being interviewed at the Geneva Motor Show 2014, on the occasion of the world debut of the Porsche 919 Hybrid Porsche’s return to the top category of the...
The formidable Carrera 6 outside the Porsche headquarters, Stuttgart Zuffenhausen, 1966 The Carrera Six, as Porsche officially called the 906, was a radically different car from its predecessor, the 904...
Jean Behra following his accident at Caracas 3 November 1957 Staring out of period black and white photographs, Jean Behra’s handsome, but battered face tells its own story: a combative...
Dr. Ulrich Bez (1988) Hailing from the Bad Cannstatt district of Stuttgart, Ulrich Bez, who as Porsche Technical supremo hatched the 993, had two significant stints at Porsche. During the...
Peter Falk sits on the sill of the famous #23 Porsche 917 KH Coupé, winner of the 1970 Le Mans 24 Hours. On this occasion it is located in the...
The inspired engineer behind so much of Porsche’s success, Helmuth Bott has long remained the company’s eminence grise, but little has been written about him. Now, Porsche Road & Race,...
Mont Ventoux, 18 June 1967 – Rolf Stommelen won this hillclimb driving a Porsche 910/8 Bergspyder Rolf Stommelen was one of Germany’s leading racing drivers for over a decade and...
Peter Gregg and Hurley Haywood won the 24 Hours of Daytona on 3/4 February 1973 driving this 911 Carrera RSR 2.8 Peter Gregg was the IMSA driver every one strived...
Autograph card signed by Jürgen Barth (ca. 1980) More books have been written about Porsche than any other car company so the publication in English of another tome is hardly...
The Seikel Motorsport team last raced in the 2007 Le Mans, having participated on no less than eleven occasions in the 24-hour race. The team’s highlight in la Sarthe was...
Valentin Schäffer (1978) Another keen young recruitee to Zuffenhausen in the early 1950s, Valentin Schäffer, would become Porsche’s racing turbo specialist and engineer the induction systems that endowed Porsche sports...
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