PORSCHE, Ferdinand

After finishing the craft school of mechanical engineering in Liberecu son of a master blacksmith came to "Vereinigten Elektrizitätswerke Egger" in Vienna as a trainee in 1893 and by the year 1897 rose to the position of the head of the test room. In 1899 he joined the Lohner company as a designer of electric cars. There he produced his first car. The so-called P.-Lohners chassis was very similar to a carriage. In 1880 it consisted of two covered seats, extra seats and mudguards. The installation of electric motors in the hub of the front driving wheels which also had a leading axle was observable. The car was presented with great succes at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900. In 1906 P. became head of development and production of the Austrian automotive company Daimler in Wiener Neustadt.
After the construction of various electric cars and hybrid vehicles he has resorted to internal combustion engine, because he realized that both constructions were overweight. In 1907, the first "Maya vehicle" was made and thus they invented the transition, which allowed a gasoline traction engine. P.’s cars won the first three places at the Prince Henry Trial in 1910.
In addition, P. was also concerned with the construction of aircraft engines and vehicles for towing heavy guns. In 1912 he created an air-cooled engine for the aircraft, which had 90 horsepower. In 1914 he constructed a defence vehicle and during the First World War executed a number of major military projects for the Austrian army, including motoriztion of the new 30.5-caliber mortar, the first heavy motorized gun in the world. In 1916 he was appointed Managing Director by the Austrian automotive company Deimler. After the war, P. developed Austro-Deimler racing car - the "Sascha" - and derived an even smaller vehicle from it. In 1923, due to the limited potential for development in post-war Austria as a member of the board P. took over Deimler’s technical department in Stuttgart (since 1926 Deimler-Benz AG). This is the period of the development of Mercedes-Benz sports cars "S", "SS", "SSK" and "SSKL" which were a part of a significant sporting achievements.
In 1929 he hoped he could as a board member and technical director of Steyr-Werke AG again transfer his ideas to Austria. Due to the economic problems that followed the collapse of the Creditanstalt in Boden, he had to give up his activity, therefore, at the end of 1930 he founded his own construction bureau in Stuttgart, which cooperated with the German automobile manufacturers. Thus arose cars for travelers with six and eight cylinder engines, the smaller vehicle for Zündapp, the same vehicle for NSU and Auto-Union racing car. In addition, they manufactured engines for vehicles and aircrafts, vehicle structure, wheel suspension system, steering, gearbox and so on. One of the major construction was a torsion spring, which was used in many of P.’s constructions and it could be installed in both normal as well as in racing vehicles.
In Stuttgart P. also started to design a cheaper Volkswagen and that is why the National automotive industry association and P.’s construction bureau concluded the contract on the establishment of Volkswagen in 1934. The third raich adopted its concept for that vehicle and in 1937 entrusted P. with the technical management of the factory in Wolfsburg, which was then built by the German labor front. In preparation for the work P. was instructed by Henry Ford on the mass production system using conveyor belt twice, in 1936 and 1937.
During World War II, P. developed the Tiger tank for the German army. During the two-year prison sentence in France (1945 to 1947), P. and Gmünd (Carinthia) started the production of agricultural machinery and construction of P. type 356. In 1949/50, the company under his leadership once again moved to Stuttgart and began to produce P.cars.
A company with P.’s name is now a small but highly successful car manufacturer and seller.